This is my attempt at bridging the half-stud gap with the fewest parts, as well as keeping the track bed minimal or nonexistent. I have not tried this in real life and cannot claim that it works or is conducive to successful running. Though I also cannot imagine any complications, unless I am missing something obvious.

A wonderful, creative and sweet man. Rest in Peace.

 

Michael's Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/

 

Michael Paul Smith, 67, Founder of a Beloved Imaginary Town, Dies

 

By Neil Genzlinger

Dec. 13, 2018

 

One of the assorted jobs Michael Paul Smith had on his way to unexpected fame was as a mail carrier.

 

“Everything you do, you will learn from it,” he said, “and you will use it later on in life.”

 

The delivery rounds he made proved useful when, years later, he became founder, chief architect and mayor of Elgin Park, surely the most visited fake town in the United States. The town, frozen in a mid-20th-century haze, exists only in the carefully staged photographs that Mr. Smith made with a cheap camera, vintage model miniature cars, tiny hand-built sets and a keen sense of perspective.

 

In 2010, the Flickr site where he displayed those pictures went viral, and within four years 74 million virtual visitors had spent time in Elgin Park. His letter-delivering experience, he said, helped make his imaginary town as close to real as something nonexistent can be.

 

“When I was mailman,” he said in “Elgin Park,” a brief 2015 documentary by Danny Yourd, “it made me aware of how streets are laid out, how towns grow. My photographs read well because there is a logic to it.”

 

A few weeks ago, visitors to the Flickr site encountered a posting saying that Mr. Smith had “moved permanently to Elgin Park,” words he himself had chosen for the announcement. He died on Nov. 19 in Reading, Mass., at 67.

His longtime partner, Henry Goldberg, said the causes were pancreatic cancer and complications of diabetes.

 

Mr. Smith created his photographs using forced perspective, the technique of making an object seem larger or smaller than it really is based on its juxtaposition with other objects. He would place the model cars and miniature buildings and props he had fashioned on a platform positioned just so — the real buildings and trees in the background would combine with the staged materials to create a realistic scene.

 

He strove for authenticity, putting baking soda on tires for a winter scene because snow sticks to tires, or making sure there was a tiny puddle under an old-fashioned milk truck because blocks of ice inside would melt a bit as it sat at the curb. But, as Daniel Strohl of Hemmings Daily, a classic-car site that first publicized Mr. Smith’s death, noted, the Elgin Park universe was defined to an extent by the kind of model cars that were available to its creator: pristine high-end automobiles that suggested a glossy version of midcentury America.

 

“Given the depth of thought he put into his artwork,” Mr. Strohl said of Mr. Smith in an email interview, “I’d argue that he at the very least recognized that myth and was, in his own way, commenting on how the past can easily be idealized, if not actively scrubbed of its messier aspects.”

 

Michael Paul Smith was born on Nov. 22, 1950, in Pittsburgh to Roy and Audrey Smith. He grew up north of that city, in Sewickley, Pa., the town that became a model for his fictional one.

 

“Elgin Park is not an exact re-creation of Sewickley,” he told The New York Times in 2010, “but it does capture the mood of my memories.”

Although many of the Elgin Park photographs look idyllic, Mr. Smith’s memories were not uniformly so. In the documentary, he spoke of being bullied because he was gay.

 

“It got so bad that the teachers let me leave class 15 minutes before the bell rang because they knew I was getting tromped on,” he said.

 

His family moved to Auburn, Mass., when he was a teenager, and after graduating from high school there he attended classes for three years at the Worcester Art Museum. He briefly enrolled at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, then got a job with an advertising agency, working there until a heart attack sidelined him at 33.

 

Moving to Boston, Mr. Smith started a wallpaper and painting company, then made models for an architectural firm. And he developed a hobby: collecting model miniature cars, many of them from the Franklin Mint or the Danbury Mint, both known for their exacting standards.

 

He posted his first photograph in 2008, but his work drew little attention for a year and a half. Then a car magazine in England reproduced a few of his pictures, and his click count soared.

 

“The day it hit the stands,” he said, “it went from a thousand hits to a million hits.”

 

National news coverage in the United States in 2010, including the article in The Times, fueled the interest. Mr. Smith’s work would eventually result in two books, “Elgin Park: An Ideal American Town” (2011) and “Elgin Park: Visual Memories of Midcentury America at 1/24th Scale” (2015), both written with Gail K. Ellison. A note Mr. Smith wrote on the Flickr site in 2010 announcing his first book contract gives a sense of how casual and do-it-yourself his art was.

 

“What’s most interesting,” he wrote, “is when I started to take the photos of my models, I had no idea what I was doing. I just aimed and shot with the little digital Sony. Who knew you had [to] set the DPI, or whatever it’s called, to the highest setting?”

 

Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

Elgin Park (a name that just came to him, Mr. Smith said, and wasn’t related to real towns with similar names) may not be a physical place, but it did become a community of sorts. He didn’t use Photoshop or similar tools, but he invited visitors to Photoshop themselves into his pictures, and many did, in period outfits, goofy costumes and so on, posting the results. But Elgin Park kept its standards.

 

“This is a family-oriented group,” the site advised. “Please, nothing you wouldn’t want your mother to see. Play nice or risk being run out of town on a rail!”

 

In the documentary, Mr. Smith reflected on why he created Elgin Park.

“I needed a place that I felt comfortable in,” he said.

“Elgin Park,” he added, “is never a lonely place for me.”

 

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 20, 2018, Section B, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Michael Paul Smith, 67; Inspired Millions to Visit A Tiny Imaginary Town.

 

From the New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/obituaries/michael-paul-smith-...

The Relativistic World of the Soul and Spirit - Some Recent Concepts by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)

 

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The Relativistic World of the Soul and Spirit - Some Recent Concepts

 

The relativistic conception of the soul proposes that spirituality acts outside conventional physical laws. While materialistic science hesitates, quantum physics offers a new language to understand what ancient traditions such as Advaita Vedanta (**) have already affirmed: time is an illusion (Maya) and consciousness is eternal.

 

The Soul as Interface, Not a Prisoner

 

In this view, linear logic loses its meaning. The soul is not a solid or measurable object, but an entity that transcends matter:

 

- The Brain as Receiver: The physical body does not generate consciousness; it functions as a biological interface. Consciousness does not "live" in neurons; the brain only tunes into the frequency of universal consciousness.

 

- Transmitter vs. Receiver: The brain captures consciousness, allowing the experience of lucidity in the dense world. The observer (the soul) is necessary for physical reality to manifest.

 

- Transcendence: Existence unfolds in non-physical dimensions, where space-time imposes no limits.

 

Non-Locality and Ubiquity

 

The idea that the soul is "non-local" resolves the dilemma of spatial separation. Through the notion of "Entanglement" (*), phenomena such as intuition or the deep connection between people are explained, regardless of distance. The concept of non-locality is thus the meeting point between mysticism and quantum science:

 

- Spiritual Entanglement: Just as entangled particles influence each other instantaneously, regardless of spatial separation, the soul connects instantaneously to different points in the universe.

 

- Ubiquity (Non-locality): Consciousness does not occupy a specific "place"; it manifests itself omnipresently, ignoring distances. Consciousness can process information from multiple planes simultaneously, just as an electron exists in a cloud of probabilities.

 

- Universal Freedom: The soul does not reside in the body; It manifests itself through it, maintaining its infinite and non-local nature.

 

The End of Linear Time

 

The Vedanta concept of Maya (illusion) aligns with Einstein's relativity:

 

- The Eternal Now: If time is relative, the soul has neither "beginning" nor "end," only states of presence.

 

- Multidimensionality: Existence is not limited to the three spatial dimensions, allowing the spirit to inhabit spaces of greater mathematical complexity. Thus, the spirit is not limited to the three-dimensional body and can inhabit higher frequencies (often called 4th, 5th, or higher dimensions).

 

In this view of the nature of the soul, relativistic spirituality thus proposes a bridge between spiritual metaphysics and the concepts of modern theoretical physics. This view suggests that spiritual reality does not violate science, but operates on a scale that classical physics does not yet fully encompass or explain.

 

Expanded Notes

 

(*) Quantum Entanglement - The Instant Connection

 

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where particles interact and share a quantum state, making their properties deeply connected, regardless of distance. In other words, when two particles are entangled, an action performed on one affects the other instantaneously, even if they are kilometers (and even light-years) apart.

 

Albert Einstein ironically called this "spooky action at a distance," as this phenomenon defied the speed of light limit. The speed of light in a vacuum is a fundamental physical constant (approximately 300,000 km/s). It is considered the maximum speed limit of the universe because, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, objects with mass would need infinite energy to reach it.

 

(**) Maya in Vedanta – The Illusion of Reality

 

In Vedanta philosophy, especially in Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism), Maya is the fundamental concept that explains the appearance of the material world and the apparent multiplicity of existence. Often translated as "illusion," Maya does not mean that the world is nonexistent or illusory, but rather that it is not what it seems to be: an independent and permanent reality.

 

According to this view, Maya describes the illusory nature of experience, where things appear separate and distinct, but are in fact manifestations of a single universal consciousness. Understanding Maya allows one to transcend the limited perception of the physical world, aligning with modern ideas about the relativity of time and the eternity of consciousness.

  

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O Mundo Relativista da Alma e do Espírito - Alguns Conceitos Recentes

 

A conceção relativista da alma propõe que a espiritualidade atua fora das leis físicas convencionais. Enquanto a ciência materialista hesita, a física quântica oferece uma nova linguagem para compreender o que tradições milenares como o Advaita Vedanta (**) já afirmavam: o tempo é uma ilusão (Maya) e a consciência é eterna.

 

A Alma como Interface, não Prisioneira

 

Nesta visão, a lógica linear perde o sentido. A alma não é um objeto sólido ou mensurável, mas uma entidade que transcende a matéria:

 

- O Cérebro como Recetor: O corpo físico não gera a consciência; ele funciona como uma interface biológica. A consciência não "mora" nos neurónios; o cérebro apenas sintoniza a frequência da consciência universal.

 

- Emissor vs. Recetor: O cérebro capta a consciência, permitindo a experiência da lucidez no mundo denso. O observador (a alma) é necessário para que a realidade física se manifeste.

 

- Transcendência: A existência desdobra-se em dimensões não físicas, onde o espaço-tempo não impõe limites.

 

Não-Localidade e Ubiquidade

 

A ideia de que a alma é "não-local" resolve o dilema da separação espacial. Através da noção do "Emaranhamento" (*), explicam-se fenómenos como a intuição ou a ligação profunda entre pessoas, independentemente da distância. O conceito de não-localidade é assim o ponto de encontro entre a mística e a ciência quântica:

 

- Emaranhamento Espiritual: Tal como partículas entrelaçadas que se influenciam mutuamente de forma instantânea, independentemente da separação espacial, a alma liga-se instantaneamente a diferentes pontos do universo.

 

-Ubiquidade (A não-localidade): A consciência não ocupa um "lugar" específico; ela manifesta-se de forma ubíqua, ignorando distâncias. A consciência pode processar informação de múltiplos planos simultaneamente, tal como um eletrão existe numa nuvem de probabilidades.

 

-Liberdade Universal: A alma não reside no corpo; ela manifesta-se através dele, mantendo a sua natureza infinita e não-local.

 

O Fim do Tempo Linear

 

A conceção de Maya (ilusão) do Vedanta (**) alinha-se com a relatividade de Einstein:

 

-O Eterno Agora: Se o tempo é relativo, a alma não tem "início" nem "fim", apenas estados de presença.

 

- Multidimensionalidade: A existência não se limita às três dimensões espaciais, permitindo que o espírito habite espaços de maior complexidade matemática. Assim, o espírito não se limita ao corpo tridimensional e pode habitar frequências mais elevadas (frequentemente chamadas de 4ª, 5ª ou dimensões superiores).

 

Nesta visão sobre a natureza da alma, a espiritualidade relativista propõe assim uma ponte entre a metafísica espiritual e os conceitos da física teórica moderna. Esta visão sugere que a realidade espiritual não viola a ciência, mas opera numa escala que a física clássica ainda não abrange e não explica totalmente.

  

Anotações Expandidas

 

(*) Emaranhamento Quântico - A Ligação Instantânea

 

O Emaranhamento Quântico (ou Entrelaçamento Quântico) é um fenómeno onde partículas interagem e compartilham um estado quântico, tornando as suas propriedades profundamente conectadas, independentemente da distância. Em outras palavras, quando duas partículas estão entrelaçadas, uma ação efetuada numa delas afeta a outra instantaneamente, mesmo que estejam a quilómetros (e até anos-luz) de distância uma da outra.

 

Albert Einstein chamou-lhe ironicamente de "ação fantasmagórica à distância", pois este fenómeno desafiava o limite da velocidade da luz. A velocidade da luz no vácuo é uma constante física fundamental (aproximadamente 300.000 km/s). É considerada o limite máximo de velocidade do universo, pois, de acordo com a Teoria da Relatividade de Einstein, objetos com massa precisariam de energia infinita para alcançá-la.

 

(**) Maya no Vedanta – A Ilusão da Realidade

 

Na filosofia Vedanta, especialmente no Advaita Vedanta (não-dualismo) de Adi Shankara, Maya é o conceito fundamental que explica a aparência do mundo material e a aparente multiplicidade da existência. Frequentemente traduzido como "ilusão", Maya não significa que o mundo é inexistente ou ilusório, mas sim que ele não é o que parece ser: uma realidade independente e permanente.

 

Segundo esta visão, Maya descreve a natureza ilusória da experiência, onde as coisas parecem separadas e distintas, mas na verdade são manifestações de uma única consciência universal. O entendimento de Maya permite transcender a percepção limitada do mundo físico, alinhando-se com ideias modernas sobre a relatividade do tempo e a eternidade da consciência.

     

Mariposa County is a county in the U.S. state of California. It is located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north of Fresno, east of Merced, and southeast of Stockton.

The county's eastern section is the central portion of Yosemite National Park.

There are no incorporated cities in Mariposa County; however, there are communities recognized as census-designated places for statistical purposes. It also has the distinction of having no permanent traffic lights anywhere in the county.Mariposa County was one of the original counties of California, created at the time of statehood in 1850. While it began as the state's largest county, territory that was once part of Mariposa was ceded over time to form all or part of twelve other counties, including all of Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Kern; and parts of San Benito, Mono, Inyo, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles. Thus, Mariposa County is known as the "Mother of Counties".

Mariposa County's original seat was a now-nonexistent hamlet known as Agua Fria (Spanish for "cold water"), about 3 miles directly west of Mariposa proper on Agua Fria Road, which runs from Highway 140 to the south, to the community of Mt. Bullion to the northwest. Charles Fremont moved the county seat to Mariposa in 1854, resulting in the construction of the Mariposa County Courthouse, whose grounds occupies an entire block. The historic structure is fronted by Bullion Street; Jones Street is to the rear, with 9th and 10th Streets on either side. This handsome, white judicial building erected with whip-sawed wood from nearby forests is the oldest courthouse still in use in California: cases are still tried there to this day. The courthouse is so recognizable that its likeness is on the Mariposa County Seal. Also particularly noteworthy is the courthouse's clock tower and bell, which chimes every hour, on the hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The county took its name from Mariposa Creek, which was so named by Spanish explorers in 1806, when they discovered a great cluster of butterflies ("mariposas" in Spanish and Portuguese) in the foothills of the Sierra. Each year, the first weekend in May, residents mark the annual arrival of migrating monarch butterflies with a "Butterfly Days" festival and parade.

Mariposa County is located at the southern end of California's Mother Lode region. During the California Gold Rush, great quantities of the prized mineral were found and extracted, first in local stream-beds and later in hard rock mines. One of the most notable beneficiaries of this wealth was the famed explorer and 1856 Republican presidential candidate, John Charles Frémont, for whom the local hospital and Charles Street (more commonly known as "Highway 140") are named. Jessie Street, in the town of Mariposa, is named for Fremont's wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, who came to Mariposa with her husband on many extended visits although they never took up permanent residence within the county.

Many aspects of the area's mining history are depicted in exhibits at two local museums: the Mariposa History Museum, located in the town of Mariposa; and the California Mining and Mineral Museum, located at the Mariposa Fairgrounds (2 miles east of Mariposa on Highway 49).

Two small gold mines in Mariposa county, the Mockingbird and the Colorado Quartz, intermittently produce world-class (and very expensive) specimens of crystalline gold for mineral collectors. "Specimens from these occurrences commonly have bright luster and rich color, with well-developed crystals in unusual and attractive arrangements." The best-known example is "The Dragon", now on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

All from the same saved seed from a store bought buttrernut squash. Had a couple of neck pumpkin types from the same seed. None of them produced any seed to speak of and the few seed shells were all empty and therefore sterile. Tiny almost nonexistent seed cavities in all of them.

 

Cracked squash heals over. It exudes a gluey type substance called Suberin that hardens and seals the split. It will also dry and burn your skin if you get any of the "glue" on you when it's wet. The sap from unripe uncured winter squash when cut, will do the same thing.

Detroit agate aka Fordite is an artifact of auto industry. It’s all quite old, created before cars were painted electrostatically. Now overspray is almost nonexistent. And that’s what Fordite is, each color a beautiful relic of one of countless cars that came down the assembly line.

USS Wisconsin (BB64) at Norfolk, VA on August-10th-2018.

USS Wisconsin is an Iowa-class battleship, the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. She was built at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and launched on 7 December 1943 (the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor raid), sponsored Margaret Goodland, wife of Governor Walter Goodland of Wisconsin.

 

During her career, Wisconsin served in the Pacific theater of World War II, where she shelled Japanese fortifications and screened United States aircraft carriers as they conducted air raids against enemy positions. During the Korean War, Wisconsin shelled North Korean targets in support of United Nations and South Korean ground operations, after which she was decommissioned. She was reactivated on 1 August 1986; after a modernization program, she participated in Operation Desert Storm in January and February 1991.

 

Wisconsin was last decommissioned in September 1991 after a total of 14 years of active service in the fleet, and having earned a total of six battle stars for service in World War II and Korea, as well as a Navy Unit Commendation for service during the January/February 1991 Gulf War. She currently functions as a museum ship operated by Nauticus, The National Maritime Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Wisconsin was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) 17 March 2006, and was donated for permanent use as a museum ship. On 15 April 2010, the City of Norfolk officially took over ownership of the ship.

 

Wisconsin was one of the "fast battleship" designs planned in 1938 by the Preliminary Design Branch at the Bureau of Construction and Repair. She was the third of four completed ships of the Iowa class of battleships. Her keel was laid down on 25 January 1941, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was launched on 7 December 1943, sponsored by Mrs. Goodland, wife of Walter S. Goodland, the Governor of Wisconsin, and commissioned on 16 April 1944, with Captain Earl E. Stone in command.

 

Wisconsin's main battery consisted of nine 16 in (406 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns, which could fire 2,700 lb (1,200 kg) armor-piercing shells some 20 mi (32 km). The secondary battery consisted of 20 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal guns in 10 twin turrets, which could fire at targets up to 10 mi (16 km) away. With the advent of air power and the need to gain and maintain air superiority came a need to protect the growing fleet of allied aircraft carriers; to this end, Wisconsin was fitted with an array of Oerlikon 20 mm and Bofors 40 mm antiaircraft guns to defend allied carriers from enemy airstrikes. When reactivated in 1986, Wisconsin had her 20 mm and 40 mm AA guns removed, and was outfitted with Phalanx CIWS mounts for protection against enemy missiles and aircraft, and armored box launchers and quad cell launchers designed to fire Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, respectively.Wisconsin and her sister ship Missouri were fitted with thicker transverse bulkhead armor, 14.5 inches (368 mm), compared to 11.3 inches (287 mm) in the first two ships of her class, the Iowa and New Jersey.

 

Wisconsin is numerically the highest-numbered US battleship built. Although her keel was laid after USS Missouri's, she was commissioned before Missouri's commissioning date. Thus, Wisconsin's construction began after Missouri's, and finished earlier. Iowa and Wisconsin were finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 17 March 2006, making them the last battleships on a navy list in the world.

 

After the ship's trials and initial training in the Chesapeake Bay, Wisconsin departed Norfolk, Virginia, on 7 July 1944, bound for the British West Indies. Following her shakedown cruise (conducted out of Trinidad), she returned to the builder's yard for alterations and repairs.

 

On 24 September 1944, Wisconsin sailed for the West Coast, transiting the Panama Canal, and reporting for duty with the Pacific Fleet on 2 October. The battleship later moved to Hawaiian waters for training exercises and then headed for the Western Caroline Islands. Upon reaching the Caroline Island Ulithi, she joined Admiral William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet on 9 December.

  

Wisconsin tied up alongside the hulk of Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor in November 1944, prior to her departure to join up with the 3rd Fleet

Due to the time it took needed to build her, Wisconsin missed much of the initial thrust into Japanese-held territory, having arrived at a time when the reconquest of the Philippines was well underway. As a part of that movement, the planners had envisioned landings on the southwest coast of Mindoro, south of Luzon. From that point, American forces could threaten Japanese shipping lanes through the South China Sea. In preparation for the coming invasion of Mindoro, Wisconsin was assigned to protect the 3rd Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force (TF 38), as they conducted air raids at Manila to soften up Japanese positions.

 

On 18 December, the ships of TF 38 unexpectedly found themselves in a fight for their lives when Typhoon Cobra overtook the force–seven fleet and six light carriers, eight battleships, 15 cruisers, and about 50 destroyers–during their attempt to refuel at sea. At the time, the ships were operating about 300 mi (480 km) east of Luzon in the Philippine Sea.The carriers had just completed three days of heavy raids against Japanese airfields, suppressing enemy aircraft during the American amphibious operations against Mindoro in the Philippines. The task force met with Captain Jasper T. Acuff and his fueling group 17 December with the intention of refueling all ships in the task force and replacing lost aircraft.Although the sea had been growing rougher all day, the nearby cyclonic disturbance gave relatively little warning of its approach. On 18 December, the small but violent typhoon overtook the task force while many of the ships were attempting to refuel. Many of the ships were caught near the center of the storm and buffeted by extreme seas and hurricane-force winds. Three destroyers, Hull, Monaghan, and Spence, capsized and sank with nearly all hands, while a cruiser, five aircraft carriers, and three destroyers suffered serious damage. About 790 men were lost or killed, with another 80 injured. Fires occurred in three carriers when planes broke loose in their hangars and some 146 planes on various ships were lost or damaged beyond economical repair by fires, impact damage, or being swept overboard. Wisconsin reported two injured sailors as a result of the typhoon,but otherwise proved her seaworthiness as she escaped the storm unscathed.

 

Wisconsin's next operation was to assist with the occupation of Luzon. Bypassing the southern beaches, American amphibious forces went ashore at Lingayen Gulf, the scene of initial Japanese assaults to take Luzon nearly three years before.

 

Wisconsin, armed with heavy antiaircraft batteries, performed escort duty for TF 38's fast carriers during air strikes against Formosa, Luzon, and the Nansei Shoto to neutralize Japanese forces there and to cover the unfolding Allied Lingayen Gulf operations. Those strikes, lasting from 3–22 January 1945, included a thrust into the South China Sea, in the hope that major units of the Imperial Japanese Navy could be drawn into battle.

 

Wisconsin's carrier group launched air strikes between Saigon and Camranh Bay, French Indochina, on 12 January, resulting in severe losses for the enemy. TF 38's warplanes sank 41 ships and heavily damaged docks, storage areas, and aircraft facilities. Formosa, already struck on 3–4 January, was raided again on 9 January, 15 January, and 21 January. Throughout January Wisconsin shielded the carriers as they conducted air raids at Hong Kong, Canton, Hainan Island, the Canton oil refineries, the Hong Kong Naval Station, and Okinawa

 

Wisconsin was assigned to the 5th Fleet when Admiral Raymond A. Spruance relieved Admiral Halsey as commander of the fleet. She moved northward with the redesignated TF 58 as the carriers headed for the Tokyo area. On 16 February, the task force approached the Japanese coast under cover of adverse weather conditions and achieved complete tactical surprise. As a result, Wisconsin and the other ships shot down 322 enemy planes and destroyed 177 more on the ground. Japanese shipping, both naval and merchant, also suffered drastically, as did hangars and aircraft installations.

 

Wisconsin and the task force moved to Iwo Jima on 17 February to provide direct support for the landings slated to take place on 19 February. They revisited Tokyo on 25 February and hit the island of Hachino off the coast of Honshū the next day, resulting in heavy damage to ground facilities; additionally, American planes sank five small vessels and destroyed 158 planes.

 

Wisconsin's task force stood out of Ulithi on 14 March bound for Japan. The mission of that group was to eliminate airborne resistance from the Japanese homeland to American forces off Okinawa. Enemy fleet units at Kure and Kobe, on southern Honshū, reeled under the impact of the explosive blows delivered by TF 58's airmen. On 18–19 March, from a point 100 mi (160 km) southwest of Kyūshū, TF 58 hit enemy airfields on that island; unfortunately, allied antiaircraft fire on 19 March failed to stop an attack on the carrier Franklin. That afternoon, Wisconsin and the task force retired from Kyūshū, screening the blazing and battered flattop, and shooting down 48 attackers.

 

On 24 March, Wisconsin trained her 16 in (406 mm) guns on targets ashore on Okinawa. Together with the other battleships of the task force, she pounded Japanese positions and installations in preparation for the landings. Japanese resistance, while fierce, was doomed to failure by dwindling numbers of aircraft and trained pilots.[5]

  

Wisconsin escorting Essex-class aircraft carriers in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The tail crane was used to recover reconnaissance planes launched by Wisconsin.

While TF 58's planes were dealing with Yamato and her escorts, enemy aircraft attacked the American surface units. Combat air patrol (CAP) shot down 15 enemy planes, and ships' gunfire shot down another three, but not before one kamikaze attack penetrated the CAP and screen to crash on the flight deck of the fleet carrier Hancock. On 11 April, the Japanese renewed their kamikaze attacks; and only drastic maneuvers and heavy barrages of gunfire saved the task force. CAP shot down 17 planes, and ships' gunfire shot down 12. The next day, 151 enemy aircraft attacked TF 58, but Wisconsin, together with other units of the screens for the vital carriers, kept the kamikaze pilots at bay and destroyed them before they could reach their targets. Over the days that ensued, Japanese kamikaze attacks managed to crash into three carriers—Intrepid, Bunker Hill, and Enterprise—on successive days.

 

By 4 June, a typhoon was swirling through the fleet. Wisconsin rode out the storm unscathed, but three cruisers, two carriers, and a destroyer suffered serious damage. Offensive operations were resumed on 8 June with a final aerial assault on Kyūshū. The Japanese aerial response was virtually nonexistent; 29 planes were located and destroyed. On that day, one of Wisconsin's floatplanes landed and rescued a downed pilot from the carrier Shangri-La.

  

Wisconsin ultimately put into Leyte Gulf and dropped anchor there on 13 June for repairs and replenishment. Three weeks later, on 1 July, the battleship and her escorts sailed once more for Japanese home waters for carrier air strikes on the enemy's heartland. Nine days later, carrier planes from TF 38 destroyed 72 enemy aircraft on the ground and smashed industrial sites in the Tokyo area. Wisconsin and the other ships made no attempt whatsoever to conceal the location of their armada, due in large part to a weak Japanese response to their presence.

 

On 16 July, Wisconsin fired her 16 in (406 mm) guns at the steel mills and oil refineries at Muroran, Hokkaido. Two days later, she wrecked industrial facilities in the Hitachi Miro area, on the coast of Honshū-, northeast of Tokyo itself. During that bombardment, British battleships of the British Pacific Fleet contributed their heavy shellfire. By that point in the war, Allied warships such as Wisconsin were able to shell the Japanese homeland almost at will.

 

TF 38's planes subsequently blasted the Japanese naval base at Yokosuka, and put the former fleet flagship Nagato out of action, one of the two remaining Japanese battleships. Throughout July and into August, Admiral Halsey's airmen visited destruction upon the Japanese, the last instance being against Tokyo on 13 August. Two days later, the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.

 

Wisconsin, as part of the occupying force, arrived at Tokyo Bay on 5 September, three days after the formal surrender occurred on board the battleship Missouri. During Wisconsin's brief career in World War II, she had steamed 105,831 mi (170,318 km) since commissioning, shot down three enemy planes, claimed assists on four occasions, and fueled her screening destroyers on some 250 occasions.

 

Shifting subsequently to Okinawa, the battleship embarked homeward-bound GIs on 22 September 1945, as part of Operation Magic Carpet staged to bring soldiers, sailors, and marines home from the far-flung battlefronts of the Pacific. Departing Okinawa on 23 September, Wisconsin reached Pearl Harbor on 4 October, remaining there for five days before she pushed on for the West Coast on the last leg of her state-side bound voyage. She reached San Francisco on 15 October.

 

Heading for the East Coast of the United States soon after the start of the new year, 1946, Wisconsin transited the Panama Canal from 11 to 13 January and reached Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 18 January. Following a cruise south to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the battleship entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for overhaul. After repairs and alterations that consumed the summer, Wisconsin sailed for South American waters.

 

Over the weeks that ensued, the battleship visited Valparaíso, Chile, from 1–6 November; Callao, Peru, from 9–13 November; Balboa, Canal Zone, from 16 to 20 November; and La Guaira, Venezuela, from 22 to 26 November, before returning to Norfolk on 2 December 1946.

 

Wisconsin spent nearly all of 1947 as a training ship, taking naval reservists on two-week cruises throughout the year. Those voyages commenced at Bayonne, New Jersey, and saw visits conducted at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Panama Canal Zone. While underway at sea, the ship would perform various drills and exercises before the cruise would end where it had started, at Bayonne. During June and July 1947, Wisconsin took United States Naval Academy midshipmen on cruises to northern European waters.

 

In January 1948, Wisconsin reported to the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Norfolk for inactivation. Placed out of commission, in reserve on 1 July, Wisconsin was assigned to the Norfolk group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

  

Buck, Wisconsin, and Saint Paul steam in close formation during operations off the Korean coast, 1952

Her sojourn in "mothballs", however, was comparatively brief, due to the North Korean invasion of South Korea in late June 1950. Wisconsin was recommissioned on 3 March 1951 with Captain Thomas Burrowes in command.[5] After shakedown training, the revitalized battleship conducted two midshipmen training cruises, taking the officers-to-be to Edinburgh, Scotland; Lisbon, Portugal; Halifax, Nova Scotia; New York City; and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before she returned to Norfolk. While leaving New York, Wisconsin was accidentally grounded on mud flats in New York Harbor, but was freed on 23 August 1951 with no damage to the ship.

 

Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 25 October, bound for the Pacific. She transited the Panama Canal on 29 October and reached Yokosuka, Japan, on 21 November. There, she relieved New Jersey as flagship for Vice Admiral H. M. Martin, Commander, 7th Fleet.

 

On 26 November, with Vice Admiral Martin and Rear Admiral F.P. Denebrink, Commander, Service Force, Pacific, embarked, Wisconsin departed Yokosuka for Korean waters to support the fast carrier operations of TF 77. She left the company of the carrier force on 2 December, and screened by the destroyer Wiltsie, provided gunfire support for the Republic of Korea (ROK) Corps in the Kasong-Kosong area. After disembarking Admiral Denebrink on 3 December at Kangnung, the battleship resumed station on the Korean "bombline", providing gunfire support for the American 1st Marine Division. Wisconsin's shelling accounted for a tank, two gun emplacements, and a building.[5] She continued her gunfire support task for the 1st Marine Division and 1st ROK Corps through 6 December, accounting for enemy bunkers, artillery positions, and troop concentrations.[5] On one occasion during that time, the battleship received a request for call-fire support and provided three star-shells for the 1st ROK Corps, illuminating an enemy attack that was consequently repulsed with a considerable number of enemy casualties

 

After being relieved on the gunline by the heavy cruiser Saint Paul on 6 December, Wisconsin briefly retired from gunfire-support duties. She resumed them, however, in the Kasong-Kosong area on 11 December screened by the destroyer Twining. The following day, 12 December, had the helicopter embarkation on Wisconsin of Rear Admiral H. R. Thurber, Commander, Battleship Division 2 (BatDiv 2), as part of his inspection trip in the Far East.

 

Wisconsin continued her naval gunfire-support duties on the bombline, shelling enemy bunkers, command posts, artillery positions, and trench systems through 14 December. She departed the "bombline" on that day to render special gunfire support duties in the Kojo area shelling coastal targets in support of United Nations (UN) troops ashore. That same day, Wisconsin returned to the Kasong-Kosong area. On 15 December, she disembarked Admiral Thurber by helicopter. The next day, Wisconsin departed Korean waters, heading for Sasebo to rearm.

 

Returning to the combat zone on 17 December, Wisconsin embarked United States Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan on 18 December. That day, the battleship supported the 11th ROK invasion with night illumination fire that enabled the ROK troops to repulse a North Korean assault with heavy enemy casualties.Departing the "bombline" on 19 December, the battleship transferred Ferguson by helicopter to the carrier Valley Forge.

  

On 20 December, Wisconsin participated in a coordinated air-surface bombardment of Wonsan to neutralize selected targets in its area. The ship shifted its bombardment station to the western end of Wonsan harbor, hitting boats and small craft in the inner swept channel with her 5-inch (127 mm) guns during the afternoon and helping forestall attempts to assault the friendly held islands nearby. Wisconsin then made an antiboat sweep to the north, firing her 5-inch batteries on suspected boat concentrations. She then provided gunfire support to UN troops operating at the bombline until 22 December, when she rejoined the carrier task force.

  

Wisconsin shells North Korean targets during the Korean War

On 28 December, Cardinal Francis Spellman, on a Korean tour over the Christmas holidays, helicoptered aboard the ship to celebrate Mass for the Catholic members of the crew. He left as he came, off Pohang. On New Year's Eve day, Wisconsin put into Yokosuka.

 

Wisconsin departed that port on 8 January 1952 and returned to Korean waters. She reached Pusan the following day and entertained the president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, and his wife, on 10 January. The couple received full military honors as they came on board, which Rhee reciprocated by awarding Vice Admiral Martin the ROK Order of the Military Merit.

 

Wisconsin returned to the bombline on 11 January, and over the ensuing days, delivered heavy gunfire support for the 1st Marine Division and the 1st ROK Corps. As before, her primary targets were command posts, shelters, bunkers, troop concentrations, and mortar positions. As before, she stood ready to deliver call-fire support as needed, shelling enemy troops in the open on 14 January at the request of the ROK 1st Corps.

 

Rearming once more at Sasebo, she shortly joined TF 77 off the coast of Korea and resumed support at the bombline on 23 January. Three days later, she shifted again to the Kojo region, to participate in a coordinated air and gun strike. That same day, the battleship returned to the bombline and shelled the command post and communications center for the 15th North Korean Division during call-fire missions for the 1st Marine Division.

 

Returning to Wonsan at the end of January, Wisconsin bombarded enemy guns at Hodo Pando before she was rearmed at Sasebo. The battleship rejoined TF 77 on 2 February, and the next day blasted railway buildings and marshaling yards at Hodo Pando and Kojo before rejoining TF 77. After replenishment at Yokosuka a few days later, she returned to the Kosong area and resumed gunfire support. During that time, she destroyed railway bridges and a small shipyard while conducting call-fire missions on enemy command posts, bunkers, and personnel shelters, making numerous cuts on enemy trench lines in the process.

 

On 26 February, Wisconsin arrived at Pusan, where Vice Admiral Shon, the ROK chief of naval operations; United States Ambassador J.J. Muccio; and Rear Admiral Scott-Montcrief, Royal Navy, Commander, Task Group 95.12 (TG 95.12), visited the battleship. Departing that South Korean port the following day, Wisconsin reached Yokosuka on 2 March, and a week later, she shifted to Sasebo to prepare to return to Korean waters.

 

Wisconsin arrived off Songjin, Korea, on 15 March and concentrated her gunfire on enemy railway transport. Early that morning, she destroyed a communist troop train trapped outside a destroyed tunnel. That afternoon, she received the first direct hit in her history, when one of four shells from a North Korean 152 mm gun battery struck the shield of a starboard 40 mm mount; although little material damage resulted, three men were injured.Wisconsin subsequently destroyed that battery with a full 16-inch (406 mm) salvo before continuing her mission.After again supporting 1st Marine Division with her heavy rifles, the battleship returned to Japan on 19 March.

 

Relieved as flagship of the 7th Fleet on 1 April by sister ship Iowa, Wisconsin departed Yokosuka, bound for the United States. En route home, she touched briefly at Guam, where she took part in the successful test of the Navy's largest floating dry dock on 4–5 April, the first ever to accommodate an Iowa-class battleship. She continued her homeward-bound voyage via Pearl Harbor and arrived at Long Beach, California, on 19 April before continuing on for Norfolk.

  

On 9 June, Wisconsin resumed her role as a training ship, taking midshipmen to Greenock, Scotland, Brest, France, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before returning to Norfolk. She departed Hampton Roads on 25 August and participated in the NATO exercise Operation Mainbrace, which was held out of Greenock, Scotland. After her return to Norfolk, Wisconsin underwent an overhaul in the naval shipyard there. Wisconsin remained in the Atlantic fleet throughout 1952 and into 1953, training midshipmen and conducting exercises. After a month of routine maintenance Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 9 September 1953, bound for the Far East.

 

Sailing via the Panama Canal to Japan, Wisconsin relieved New Jersey as 7th Fleet flagship on 12 October. During the months that followed, Wisconsin visited the Japanese ports of Kobe, Sasebo Navy Yard, Yokosuka, Otaru, and Nagasaki. She spent Christmas at Hong Kong and was ultimately relieved of flagship duties on 1 April 1954 and returned to the United States soon thereafter, reaching Norfolk, via Long Beach and the Panama Canal, on 4 May.

 

Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 11 June, Wisconsin underwent a brief overhaul and commenced a midshipman training cruise on 12 July. After revisiting Greenock, Brest, and Guantánamo Bay, the ship returned to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for repairs. Shortly thereafter, Wisconsin participated in Atlantic Fleet exercises as flagship for the commander, Second Fleet. Departing Norfolk in January 1955, Wisconsin took part in Operation Springboard, during which she visited Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Then, upon returning to Norfolk, the battleship conducted another midshipman's cruise that summer, visiting Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Guantánamo Bay before returning to the United States.

 

Upon completion of a major overhaul at the New York Naval Shipyard, Wisconsin headed south for refresher training in the Caribbean Sea, later taking part in another Springboard exercise. During that cruise, she again visited Port-au-Prince and added Tampico, Mexico, and Cartagena, Colombia, to her list of ports of call. She returned to Norfolk on the last day of March 1955 for local operations.On 19 October, while operating in the East River in New York Harbor, Wisconsin was accidentally grounded, but the ship was freed in about an hour without any serious damage.

  

Throughout April 1956 and into May, Wisconsin operated locally off the Virginia Capes. On 6 May, the battleship collided with the destroyer Eaton in a heavy fog; Wisconsin put into Norfolk with extensive damage to her bow, and one week later entered dry dock at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.A novel experiment sped her repairs and enabled the ship to carry out her scheduled midshipman training cruise that summer. A 120-ton, 68 foot (21 m) section of the bow of Wisconsin's incomplete sister ship Kentucky was transported by barge, in one section, from Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation of Newport News, Virginia, across Hampton Roads to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Working around the clock, Wisconsin's ship's force and shipyard personnel completed the operation that grafted on the new bow in 16 days. On 28 June 1956, the ship was ready for sea.

  

The bow of Kentucky was transported in one section, by barge, to repair Wisconsin.

Wisconsin resumed her midshipman training on 9 July 1956. That autumn, Wisconsin participated in Atlantic Fleet exercises off the coast of the Carolinas, returning to port on 8 November 1956. Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard a week later, the battleship underwent major repairs that were not finished until 2 January 1957.

 

After local operations off the Virginia capes on 3–4 January 1957 and from 9–11 January, Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 16 January, reporting to the commander, Fleet Training Group, at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay. Wisconsin served as Admiral Henry Crommelin's flagship during the ensuing shore bombardment practices and other exercises held off the isle of Culebra, Puerto Rico, from 2–4 February. Sailing for Norfolk upon completion of the training period, the battleship arrived on 7 February and resumed local operations off Norfolk. On 27 March, Wisconsin sailed for the Mediterranean Sea, reaching Gibraltar on 6 April, she pushed on that day to rendezvous with TF 60 in the Aegean Sea before reporting to Turkey for the NATO exercise Red Pivot.

Departing Xeros Bay on 14 April, she arrived at Naples four days later, and conducted exercises in the eastern Mediterranean. In the course of those operational training evolutions, she rescued a pilot and crewman who survived the crash of a plane from the aircraft carrier Forrestal.[6] Wisconsin reached Valencia, Spain, on 10 May, and three days later, entertained prominent civilian and military officials of the city.

 

Departing Valencia on 17 April, Wisconsin reached Norfolk on 27 May. En route, she was called upon to sink a Boeing KC-97F-55-BO Stratofreighter, 51-0258, which had ditched in the Atlantic on 9 May, 550 km (343.8 mi) southeast of the Azores Islands following a double engine failure, and subsequently floated for 10 days.

  

On 27 May, Rear Admiral L.S. Parks relieved Rear Admiral Crommelin as Commander, BatDiv 2. Departing Norfolk on 19 June, the battleship, over the ensuing weeks, conducted a midshipman training cruise through the Panama Canal to South American waters, and reached Valparaiso on 3 July. Eight days later, the battleship headed back to the Panama Canal and the Atlantic.

 

After exercises at Guantánamo Bay and off Culebra, Wisconsin reached Norfolk on 5 August and conducted local operations that lasted into September. She then participated in NATO exercises, which took her across the North Atlantic to the British Isles.

 

Wisconsin's days as an active fleet unit were numbered, and she prepared to make her last cruise. On 4 November, she departed Norfolk with a large group of prominent guests on board. Reaching New York City on 6 November, the battleship disembarked her guests, and on 8 November, headed for Bayonne, New Jersey, to commence a preinactivation overhaul. She was placed out of commission at Bayonne on 8 March 1958, and joined the United States Navy reserve fleet (better known as the "mothball fleet") there, leaving the Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1895.[5] Subsequently, taken to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Wisconsin remained there with her sister ship Iowa into the 1980s. While berthed in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, an electrical fire damaged the ship and left her as the Iowa-class battleship in the worst material condition prior to her 1980s reactivation.

  

As part of President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John F. Lehman's effort to create a "600-ship Navy," Wisconsin was reactivated 1 August 1986, a precommissioning unit (PCU) crew established, and the ship moved under tow to the Avondale Shipyard in New Orleans, Louisiana, to commence pre-recommissioning workups. The battleship was then towed from the Avondale Shipyard and arrived at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 2 January 1987 to receive weapons system upgrades for her modernization. During the modernization, Wisconsin had all of her remaining 20 mm Oerlikon and 40 mm Bofors antiaircraft guns removed, due to their ineffectiveness against modern jet fighters and enemy antiship missiles; additionally, the two 5 in (127 mm) gun mounts located at midship and in the aft on the port and starboard sides of the battleship were removed.

  

Wisconsin alongside Saratoga (CV-60) during her 1990–91 Mediterranean cruise

Over the next several months, the ship was upgraded with the most advanced weaponry available. Among the new weapon systems installed were four MK 141 quad cell launchers for 16 RGM-84 Harpoon antiship missiles, eight armored box launcher mounts for 32 BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles, and four of the United States Navy's Phalanx Close-in weapon system 20 mm Gatling guns for defense against enemy antiship missiles and enemy aircraft. Wisconsin also received eight RQ-2 Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely controlled drones that replaced the helicopters previously used to spot for her nine 16 in (406 mm) guns.Also included in her modernization were upgrades to radar and fire control systems for her guns and missiles, and improved electronic warfare capabilities. Armed as such, Wisconsin was formally recommissioned on 22 October 1988 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, under the command of Captain Jerry M. Blesch, USN. Assigned to the United States Atlantic Fleet, she was subsequently homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, where she became the centerpiece of her own surface action group (SAG), also referred to as a battleship battle group (BBBG).

 

Wisconsin spent the first part of 1989 conducting training exercises in the Atlantic Ocean and off the coast of Puerto Rico before returning to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for a post-recommissioning shakedown that lasted the rest of the year. In mid-1990, the battleship participated in a fleet exercise.

  

Wisconsin launched a BGM-109 Tomahawk missile against a military target in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the middle of the month, President George H. W. Bush, in keeping with the Carter Doctrine, sent the first of several hundred thousand troops, along with a strong force of naval support, to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf area to support a multinational force in a standoff with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On 7 August, Wisconsin and her battle group were ordered to deploy in defense of Kuwait for Operation Desert Shield, and they arrived in the Persian Gulf on 23 August.[6] On 15 January 1991, Operation Desert Storm commenced operations, and Wisconsin found herself serving alongside her sister Missouri, just as she had done in Korea 40 years previously. Both Wisconsin and Missouri launched Tomahawk missile attacks against Iraq; they were among the first ships to fire cruise missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. Wisconsin served as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) strike commander for the Persian Gulf, directing the sequence of launches that marked the opening of Operation Desert Storm and firing a total of 24 of her own TLAMs during the first two days of the campaign.] Wisconsin also assumed the responsibility of the local antisurface warfare coordinator for the Northern Persian Gulf Surface Action Group.

  

Wisconsin fired her big guns on Iraqi positions in then Iraqi-occupied Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Wisconsin, escorted by Nicholas, relieved Missouri on 6 February, then answered her first combat call for gunfire support since March 1952. The most recently recommissioned battleship sent 11 shells 19 mi (31 km) to destroy an Iraqi artillery battery in southern Kuwait during a mission called in by USMC OV-10 Bronco aircraft. Using an RQ-2 Pioneer UAV as a spotter in combat for the first time, Wisconsin pounded an Iraqi communications compound on 7 February. Her main guns lobbed 24 shells on Iraqi artillery sites, missile facilities, and electronic-warfare sites along the coast. That evening, she targeted naval sites with her 16 in (406 mm) guns, firing 50 rounds, which severely damaged or sank 15 Iraqi boats, and destroyed several piers at the Khawr al-Mufattah marina.[6] In response to calls for fire support from US and coalition forces, Wisconsin's main battery was used again on 9 February, blasting bunkers and artillery sites, and shelling Iraqi troop positions near Khafji after the Iraqis were ousted from the city by Saudi and Qatari armor. On 21 February, one of Wisconsin's UAVs observed several trucks resupplying an Iraqi command post; in response, Wisconsin trained her 16 in (406 mm) guns on the complex, leveling or heavily damaging 10 of the buildings. Wisconsin and Missouri alternated positions on the gun line, using their 16 in (406 mm) guns to destroy enemy targets and soften defenses along the Kuwait coastline for a possible amphibious assault.

  

A technician moved a Pioneer RPV across the fantail of Wisconsin.

On the night of 23 February, Missouri and Wisconsin turned their big guns on Kuwait's Faylaka Island to support the US-led coalition ground offensive to free Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation forces. The two ships were to conduct a diversionary assault aimed at convincing the Iraqi forces arrayed along the shores of Faylaka Island that coalition forces were preparing to launch an amphibious invasion.As part of this attack, Missouri and Wisconsin were directed to shell known Iraqi defensive positions on the island. Shortly after Missouri completed her shelling of Faylaka Island, Wisconsin, while still over the horizon (and thus out of visual range of the Iraqi forces) launched her RQ-2 Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to spot for her 16 in (406 mm) guns. As Wisconsin's drone approached Faylaka Island, the pilot of the drone was instructed to fly the vehicle low over Iraqi positions so that the soldiers would know that they were once again being targeted by a battleship.[20] Iraqi troops on the ground heard the Pioneer's distinctive buzzing sound, and having witnessed the effects of Missouri's artillery strike on their trench line, the Iraqi troops decided to signal their willingness to surrender by waving makeshift white flags, an action dutifully noted aboard Wisconsin. Amused at this sudden development, the men assigned to the drone's aircrew called Wisconsin's commanding officer, Captain David S. Bill III, and asked, "Sir, they want to surrender, what should I do with them?"This surrender to Wisconsin's Pioneer has since become one of the most remembered moments of the Gulf War; the incident was also the first-ever surrender of enemy troops to an unmanned aircraft controlled by a ship.Wisconsin drone also carried out a number of reconnaissance missions on occupied Kuwait before the coalition's ground offensive.

The next day, Wisconsin answered two separate call-fire support missions for coalition forces by suppressing Iraqi troops barricaded in two bunkers. After witnessing the effects of Wisconsin's strike against the Iraqi positions, an elated Saudi marine commander commented over the radio, "I wish we had a battleship in our navy."

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the absence of a perceived threat to the United States came drastic cuts in the defense budget. The high cost of maintaining and operating battleships as part of the United States Navy's active fleet became uneconomical; as a result, Wisconsin was decommissioned on 30 September 1991 after 14 total years of active service, and joined the Reserve Fleet at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) on 12 January 1995, then on 15 October 1996, she was moved to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and on 12 February 1998, she was restored to the Naval Vessel Register. On 7 December 2000, the battleship was towed from Portsmouth, Virginia and berthed adjacent to Nauticus, The National Maritime Center in Norfolk. On 16 April 2001 the battleship's weather decks were opened to the public by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, a U.S. Navy museum charged with Wisconsin's interpretation and public visitation. The ship was still owned by the Navy and was considered part of the mothball fleet.

  

Wisconsin was named (along with Iowa) as one of two US Navy battleships to be maintained in the United States Navy reserve fleets in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996 as shore-bombardment vessels. However, Wisconsin was then over 60 years old and would have required extensive modernization to return to the fleet since most of her technology dated back to World War II, and the missile and electronic-warfare equipment added to the battleship during her 1988–89 modernization were considered obsolete. In addition, the cost of modernizing the battleships was estimated to be around $500 million for reactivation and $1.5 billion for a full modernization program.

  

On 17 March 2006, the Secretary of the Navy exercised his authority to strike Iowa and Wisconsin from the NVR, which cleared the way for both ships to be donated for use as museums; however, the U.S. Congress remained "deeply concerned" over the loss of naval surface-gunfire support that the battleships provided, and noted, "...navy efforts to improve upon, much less replace, this capability have been highly problematic."Partially as a consequence, Congress passed Pub.L. 109–163 (text) (PDF), the National Defense Authorization Act 2006, requiring that the battleships be kept and maintained in a state of readiness should they ever be needed again.[Congress had ordered that the following measures be implemented to ensure that Wisconsin could be returned to active duty if needed:

 

She must not be altered in any way that would impair her military utility.

The battleship must be preserved in her present condition through the continued use of cathodic protection, dehumidification systems, and any other preservation methods as needed.

Spare parts and unique equipment, such as the 16 in (406 mm) gun barrels and projectiles, must be preserved in adequate numbers to support Wisconsin, if reactivated.

The Navy must prepare plans for the rapid reactivation of Wisconsin should she be returned to the Navy in the event of a national emergency.

These conditions closely mirror the original three conditions that the Nation Defense Authorization Act of 1996 laid out for the maintenance of Wisconsin while she was in the mothball fleet.These conditions would be unlikely to impede a plan to turn Wisconsin into a permanent museum ship at her berth in Norfolk.

 

On 14 December 2009, the US Navy officially transferred Wisconsin to the city of Norfolk, ending the requirement for the ship to be preserved for possible recall to active duty. The US Navy had paid the city of Norfolk $2.8 million between 2000 and 2009 to maintain the ship.A formal ceremony transferring the ship to the city of Norfolk took place on 16 April 2010. Wisconsin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 28 March 2012.

 

Wisconsin earned five battle stars for her World War II service via the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal , and one for the Korean War Campaign Medal . The ship also received the Combat Action Ribbon and Navy Unit Commendation for actions in the Korean War and Operation Desert Storm in 1991. She also received over a dozen more awards for World War II, the Korean War, and Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm including the World Two Victory Medal.

Met up with Florian and drove up the Coyote Canyon 4WD trail into Collins Canyon. We spent several hours exploring every drivable trail. Wildflowers were pretty much nonexistent, but the Ocotillo was nicely in bloom.

This month’s challenge called I Smell A (Modern) Rat asks us what would rat rodding be like if we applied the same principles to modern cars. For this I chose a Dodge Magnum with a V-8 Hemi. Instead of a more predictable post-apoc Mad Max look, I went with a beach combing car with rugged tires, wood paneling, and a nonexistent roof and tailgate. Just enough rust and patina adds a bit of well loved character while a wooden deck and benches gives this “Magnum Opus” a boat-like appearance that’s suitable for fishing, surfing, or just soaking up some rays. Its the perfect modern rat rod for a hot summer day!

Poltu Quatu is a hamlet born in the late 80's. It owes its name to the Sardinian name, which means "hidden port". It is not well known and covers a very characteristic creek: It is hidden from the gaze of unskilleds through the dense vegetation surrounding the coast In fact, the port was built in a wonderful natural fjord. It is located along the road that leads from Porto Cervo to Baja Sardinia. Its population is practically nonexistent, but during the summer it becomes a very active center especially for luxury vacations. Many VIPs flock to the harbor during the summer season.

This fighter doesn't exist. It has an ejectable seat, flick fire missiles and other missiles. I know, lots of missiles, here's a video of it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd5H6bZNybU

Mt Sherman stood out quite prominent this day.

This has been my usual spot to shoot Mt Sherman for years.

The reason I was drawn to it was the now nonexistent pond.

Even in the wet year of 2023 it was dry

IMG_0264 copy_pe

SET 4 – West Point Wal-Mart

 

What’s up, party people?! Okay… I promise I’ll never say that again, as long as you promise to forgive me for how sporadic/nonexistent my uploads have been lately. With any luck, busy season should finally be over at work, and in turn hopefully my uploads will begin to get back on pattern – even if that pattern is considerably slower than it had been in the past. I also hope to bring my blog back from the dead, too: if not this month, then next month for sure. Anyway, at the risk of falling behind yet again by way of not waiting until I have a few more sets of descriptions built up in my reserves, since it’s been so long I’m posting these ones hot off the press today. We’re back at the West Point Wal-Mart, still hanging around in its furniture department aisle.

 

(c) 2022 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

It's almost as if music seems to heighten every emotion. You might be going to a show to see a band but there's all of these elements outside of your control. You might be anxious about meeting someone there, the aggressiveness of the crowd, or arriving too late. Set times might change or you might be waiting in a super hot and poorly ventilated packed space for a musician who is an hour plus late.

 

Going to a show has all of these factors for those who aren't shooting it. For those who are photographing, there's a whole new set. Some venues are inconsistent about whether they will have a photopit up and you never seem to know until you actually get there. For us, a band going on early means, if the venue follows the strict 3 song limit, we might not get a chance to photograph that musician period. With an aggressive crowd, we also risk not only broken bones but thousands of dollars of camera equipment that may not be ensured breaking. And, of course, dark lighting or nonexistent lighting for us means our coverage will look terrible and if it's a band we really care about, we can't help but stress about that. Also, even though so many of us do this for free out of love for the band, it's really not uncommon for the publicist or the venue to mess up and for us not to be on the list or even be allowed to take photos. This even happened to me just last Saturday. It can be one of the most nerve wracking experiences out there just to use your camera to capture the memories.

 

But above all, for me, the most anxiety is usually caused when I'm photographing someone quiet such as Laura Marling or Mirah. I never like to get in the way of others physically so I try to show up on the early side and try not to stand right in front of someone shorter than me. But that clicking sound of the shutter closing can be rather thunderous.

 

I'd been a Magnetic Fields fan for well over a decade when they played at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music in 2008. I was lucky that my friend Sei Jin bought enough tickets early on when I was at work that Cinchel and I could buy two. Tickets were $25 a piece. For those unfamiliar with the venue, it's unfortunately not my favorite. It tends to host quieter acts in an environment I find stifling. Everyone sits down as if we're all a little too suburban to suffer standing. There is never any photopit and the light can be quite variable which means if you don't have a ticketed seat right up front, you aren't going to get any good shots.

 

I photographed Magnetic Fields for Venus Zine and I should have realized when it took so long to get the photopass that the band really wasn't all that interested in getting their picture taken. The first thing that happened before the show even began was a rude person at will call who told me that after I was finished shooting my ONE first song, I needed to leave. I had to explain I had actually paid $25 for the privilege of shooting the band for one song, which is rather unfortunate.

 

But the worst part came later. Stephin Merritt doesn't play with heavy distortion despite the fact that they were touring on an album by that name at the time. I've also heard he's a bit of an antisocial sort of person. Still, I really love his music and was just as anxious as I was excited.

 

The real horrible thing happened when right before the first song, Claudia Gonson turned to me-I was the only photographer there-and though I was taking photos from the seat and had purchased the tickets, though I wasn't using flash or being obtrusive, she says, "You KNOW it's only one song right?" It was unnecessary and, because it was directed right at me, it drew everyone's attention my way negatively even though that had never been my intention.

 

I still love the music but sometimes the more you get to know the personalities of those who sing the lyrics you know by heart and write the melodies that change your life, unfortunately, *sometimes* the more you dislike them as people.

 

I think Stephin Merritt is a genius but I'm kind of glad he's not my next door neighbor or something.

 

Ok-your turn to vent!

Shifting our view slightly to the right, here's a look down one of the store's actionways from the front left corner down to the back left corner. (With the number of actionways in this store, I don't think I'm even going to bother trying to name them “left actionway,” “right actionway,” etc. this time around, haha!)

 

The electronics desk is hidden on the extreme left of this view (behind those TV boxes), with the (probably nonexistent, at least in regards to its latter half) cameras and film department beyond that. Cards and party are on my right, with both home office and home improvement following suit.

 

(c) 2018 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

SARAJEVO Ode to Joy, Opus: Children of War,

Mirza Ajanovic POETIC Photography,

SARAJEVO WAR Gateway of Hell,

Grand OPUS; Sarajevo City of Light,

BOSNIA in Tragic WAR 1992-95,

POETIC Beauty and Strength of the Human Spirit,

During the years of terror cast upon Bosnia and my city of Sarajevo, photography remained my only medium of artistic expression. My painting conditions were nonexistent, (shortage of materials, time and peace). My photographs were captured while walking between steps. Each step representing life or death… In this town of sorrows, agony surrounded by walls of hatred and evil, I encountered the most extraordinary beings in this world. They are genuine people, without hatred; people who survive inside the walls of a besieged city, without electricity, fuel, food, water, etc. Sarajevo became the massacred city where every new day is awaited as a miracle; awaited with patience and disbelief that you are still alive. There was a light that continued to glow from this destroyed city and its people; they had not lost their spirit. Exhibitions and concerts were still being attended by people who shed the tears of happiness, knowing that they couldn’t kill the art. A horrifying beauty was born.

Intensely preoccupied with exploring light at edge of shadow,

Picture is based on light and darkness counterpoints,

With elements of Chiaroscuro,

Observation of physical and psychological reality,

Acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional intensity,

Strong, dramatic expression,

Perception beyond Appearances,

Symbolism, POETIC TransRealism;

Perception beyond the Veil, including the veil of religion;

‘The true light came to the world and resided in the world,

And the world did not understand it,’

MIRZA AJANOVIC Fine ART Photography,

Carpenter bees are large, sturdy, shiny, black-coloured bees, some species having yellow markings on their heads. Sometimes they may be mistaken for bumblebees.

In several species, the females live alongside their own daughters or sisters, creating a small social group. They use wood bits to form partitions between the cells in the nest. A few species bore holes in wood dwellings. The entrance is often a perfectly circular hole measuring about 16 mm (0.63 in) on the underside of a beam, bench, or tree limb. Carpenter bees do not eat wood. They discard the bits of wood, or reuse particles to build partitions between cells. Since the tunnels are near the surface, structural damage is generally minor or nonexistent.

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

USS Wisconsin (BB-64)

 

History

United States

Namesake: The State of Wisconsin

Ordered: 12 June 1940

Builder: Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

Laid down: 25 January 1941

Launched: 7 December 1943

Sponsored by: Mrs. Goodland, wife of Walter S. Goodland

Commissioned: 16 April 1944

Decommissioned: 1 July 1948

Recommissioned: 3 March 1951

Decommissioned: 8 March 1958

Recommissioned: 22 October 1988

Decommissioned: 30 September 1991

Struck: 17 March 2006

Motto: Forward for Freedom

Nickname(s): "Wisky" or "WisKy"

Honors and

awards: 6 Battle Stars

Status: Museum ship at Nauticus

Notes: Homeport Norfolk Virginia

Badge: USS Wisconsin COA.png

General characteristics

Class and type: Iowa-class battleship

Displacement: 52,000 tons

Length: 887.2 ft (270.4 m)

Beam: 108.2 ft (33.0 m)

Draft: 28.9 ft (8.8 m)

Speed: 30 kn (35 mph; 56 km/h)

Complement: 1,921 officers and men

Sensors and

processing systems:

 

AN/SPS-49 Air Search Radar

AN/SPS-67 Surface Search Radar

AN/SPQ-9 Surface Search / Gun Fire Control Radar

 

Electronic warfare

& decoys:

 

AN/SLQ-32

AN/SLQ-25 Nixie Decoy System

8 × Mark 36 SRBOC Super Rapid Bloom Offboard Chaff Rocket Launchers

 

Armament:

 

1943:

9 × 16 in (410 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns

20 × 5 in (130 mm)/38 cal Mark 12 guns

80 × 40 mm/56 cal anti-aircraft guns

49 × 20 mm/70 cal anti-aircraft guns

1983:

9 × 16 in (410 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns

12 × 5 in (130 mm)/38 cal Mark 12 guns

32 × BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles

16 × RGM-84 Harpoon Anti-Ship missiles

4 × 20 mm/76 cal Phalanx CIWS

 

Armor:

 

Belt: 12.1 in (310 mm)

Bulkheads: 11.3 in (290 mm)

Barbettes: 11.6 to 17.3 in (290 to 440 mm)

Turrets: 19.7 in (500 mm)

Decks: 7.5 in (190 mm)

 

USS Wisconsin (BB-64)

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Virginia Landmarks Register

USS Wisconsin (BB-64) is located in Virginia

USS Wisconsin (BB-64)

Location 1 Waterside Dr., Norfolk, Virginia

Coordinates 36°50′54″N 76°17′43″WCoordinates: 36°50′54″N 76°17′43″W

Built 1941

Architect Bureau of Construction and Repair

Architectural style Iowa-class battleship

NRHP Reference # 12000178[1]

VLR # 122-5414

Significant dates

Added to NRHP 28 March 2012

Designated VLR December 15, 2011[2]

 

USS Wisconsin (BB-64) is an Iowa-class battleship, the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. She was built at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and launched on 7 December 1943 (the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor raid), sponsored by the wife of Governor Walter Goodland of Wisconsin.

 

During her career, Wisconsin served in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where she shelled Japanese fortifications and screened United States aircraft carriers as they conducted air raids against enemy positions. During the Korean War, Wisconsin shelled North Korean targets in support of United Nations and South Korean ground operations, after which she was decommissioned. She was reactivated on 1 August 1986; after a modernization program, she participated in Operation Desert Storm in January and February 1991.

 

Wisconsin was last decommissioned in September 1991, having earned a total of six battle stars for service in World War II and Korea, as well as a Navy Unit Commendation for service during the January/February 1991 Gulf War. She currently functions as a museum ship operated by Nauticus, The National Maritime Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Wisconsin was struck from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) 17 March 2006, and, as of 14 December 2009, has been donated for permanent use as a museum ship. On 15 April 2010, the City of Norfolk officially took over ownership of the ship.[3]

 

Construction

Main articles: Iowa-class battleship and Armament of the Iowa class battleship

 

Wisconsin was one of the "fast battleship" designs planned in 1938 by the Preliminary Design Branch at the Bureau of Construction and Repair. She was the third of four completed ships of the Iowa class of battleships.[4] Her keel was laid down on 25 January 1941, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was launched on 7 December 1943, sponsored by Mrs. Goodland, wife of Walter S. Goodland, the Governor of Wisconsin, and commissioned on 16 April 1944, with Captain Earl E. Stone in command.[5][6]

 

Wisconsin's main battery consisted of nine 16 in (406 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns, which could hurl 2,700 lb (1,200 kg) armor-piercing shells some 20 mi (32 km). The secondary battery consisted of 20 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal guns in ten twin turrets, which could fire at targets up to 10 mi (16 km) away. With the advent of air power and the need to gain and maintain air superiority came a need to protect the growing fleet of allied aircraft carriers; to this end, Wisconsin was fitted with an array of Oerlikon 20 mm and Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft guns to defend allied carriers from enemy airstrikes. When reactivated in 1986, Wisconsin had her 20 mm and 40 mm AA guns removed, and was outfitted with Phalanx CIWS mounts for protection against enemy missiles and aircraft, and Armored Box Launchers and Quad Cell Launchers designed to fire Tomahawk missiles and Harpoon missiles, respectively.[7]

 

Wisconsin is numerically the highest numbered US battleship built. Although her keel was laid after the USS Missouri's, she was commissioned before the Missouri's commissioning date.[4][8] Thus, Wisconsin's construction began after Missouri's, and finished earlier. Iowa and Wisconsin were finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry on 17 March 2006 making them the last battleships in commission in the world.

World War II (1944–1945)

Shakedown and service with 3rd Fleet, Admiral Halsey

 

After the ship's trials and initial training in the Chesapeake Bay, Wisconsin departed Norfolk, Virginia, on 7 July 1944, bound for the British West Indies. Following her shakedown cruise (conducted out of Trinidad) she returned to the builder's yard for alterations and repairs.[5]

Wisconsin during her initial sea trials in mid 1944

 

On 24 September 1944, Wisconsin sailed for the west coast, transiting the Panama Canal, and reporting for duty with the Pacific Fleet on 2 October. The battleship later moved to Hawaiian waters for training exercises and then headed for the Western Caroline Islands. Upon reaching the Caroline Island Ulithi she joined Admiral William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet on 9 December.[5][9]

Wisconsin tied up alongside the hulk of Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor in November 1944, prior to her departure to join up with the 3rd Fleet.

 

Due to the length of time it took to build her, Wisconsin missed much of the initial thrust into Japanese-held territory, having arrived at a time when the reconquest of the Philippines was well underway. As a part of that movement, the planners had envisioned landings on the southwest coast of Mindoro, south of Luzon. From that point, American forces could threaten Japanese shipping lanes through the South China Sea. In preparation for the coming invasion of Mindoro, Wisconsin was assigned to protect the 3rd Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force (TF 38), as they conducted air raids at Manila to soften up Japanese positions.[5]

 

On 18 December, the ships of TF 38 unexpectedly found themselves in a fight for their lives when Typhoon Cobra overtook the force–seven fleet and six light carriers, eight battleships, 15 cruisers, and about 50 destroyers–during their attempt to refuel at sea. At the time the ships were operating about 300 mi (480 km) east of Luzon in the Philippine Sea.[10] The carriers had just completed three days of heavy raids against Japanese airfields, suppressing enemy aircraft during the American amphibious operations against Mindoro in the Philippines. The task force rendezvoused with Captain Jasper T. Acuff and his fueling group 17 December with the intention of refueling all ships in the task force and replacing lost aircraft.[11] Although the sea had been growing rougher all day, the nearby cyclonic disturbance gave relatively little warning of its approach. On 18 December, the small but violent typhoon overtook the Task Force while many of the ships were attempting to refuel. Many of the ships were caught near the center of the storm and buffeted by extreme seas and hurricane-force winds. Three destroyers, Hull, Monaghan, and Spence, capsized and sank with nearly all hands, while a cruiser, five aircraft carriers, and three destroyers suffered serious damage.[10] Approximately 790 officers and men were lost or killed, with another 80 injured. Fires occurred in three carriers when planes broke loose in their hangars and some 146 planes on various ships were lost or damaged beyond economical repair by fires, impact damage, or by being swept overboard.[11] Wisconsin reported two injured sailors as a result of the typhoon,[12] but otherwise proved her seaworthiness as she escaped the storm unscathed.[5][11]

 

Wisconsin's next operation was to assist with the occupation of Luzon. Bypassing the southern beaches, American amphibious forces went ashore at Lingayen Gulf, the scene of initial Japanese assaults to take Luzon nearly three years before.[5]

 

Wisconsin, armed with heavy anti-aircraft batteries, performed escort duty for TF 38's fast carriers during air strikes against Formosa, Luzon, and the Nansei Shoto to neutralize Japanese forces there and to cover the unfolding Allied Lingayen Gulf operations. Those strikes, lasting from 3–22 January 1945, included a thrust into the South China Sea, in the hope that major units of the Imperial Japanese Navy could be drawn into battle.[5]

 

Wisconsin's carrier group launched air strikes between Saigon and Camranh Bay, French Indochina, on 12 January, resulting in severe losses for the enemy. TF 38's warplanes sank 41 ships and heavily damaged docks, storage areas, and aircraft facilities. Formosa, already struck on 3–4 January, was raided again on 9 January 15 January, and 21 January. Throughout January Wisconsin shielded the carriers as they conducted air raids at Hong Kong, Canton, Hainan Island, the Canton oil refineries, the Hong Kong Naval Station, and Okinawa.[5]

Service with 5th Fleet, Admiral Spruance

 

Wisconsin was assigned to the 5th Fleet when Admiral Raymond A. Spruance relieved Admiral Halsey as Commander of the Fleet. She moved northward with the redesignated TF 58 as the carriers headed for the Tokyo area. On 16 February, the task force approached the Japanese coast under cover of adverse weather conditions and achieved complete tactical surprise. As a result, Wisconsin and the other ships shot down 322 enemy planes and destroyed 177 more on the ground. Japanese shipping, both naval and merchant, also suffered drastically, as did hangars and aircraft installations.[5]

 

Wisconsin and the task force moved to Iwo Jima on 17 February to provide direct support for the landings slated to take place on 19 February. They revisited Tokyo on 25 February and hit the island of Hachino off the coast of Honshū the next day, resulting in heavy damage to ground facilities; additionally, American planes sank five small vessels and destroyed 158 planes.[5]

 

Wisconsin's task force stood out of Ulithi on 14 March bound for Japan. The mission of that group was to eliminate airborne resistance from the Japanese homeland to American forces off Okinawa. Enemy fleet units at Kure and Kobe, on southern Honshū, reeled under the impact of the explosive blows delivered by TF 58's airmen. On 18–19 March, from a point 100 mi (160 km) southwest of Kyūshū, TF 58 hit enemy airfields on that island; unfortunately, allied anti-aircraft fire on 19 March failed to stop an attack on the carrier Franklin. That afternoon, Wisconsin and the task force retired from Kyūshū, screening the blazing and battered flattop, and shooting down 48 attackers.[5]

 

On 24 March, Wisconsin trained her 16 in (410 mm) guns on targets ashore on Okinawa. Together with the other battle-wagons of the task force, she pounded Japanese positions and installations in preparation for the landings. Japanese resistance, while fierce, was doomed to failure by dwindling numbers of aircraft and trained pilots.[5]

Wisconsin escorting US Essex-class aircraft carriers in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The tail crane was used to recover reconnaissance planes launched by Wisconsin.

 

While TF 58's planes were dealing with Yamato and her escorts, enemy aircraft attacked the American surface units. Combat air patrols (CAP) shot down 15 enemy planes, and ships' gunfire shot down another three, but not before one kamikaze attack penetrated the CAP and screen to crash on the flight deck of the fleet carrier Hancock. On 11 April, the Japanese renewed their kamikaze attacks; and only drastic maneuvers and heavy barrages of gunfire saved the task force. Combat air patrols shot down 17 planes, and ships' gunfire shot down 12. The next day, 151 enemy aircraft attacked TF 58, but Wisconsin, together with other units of the screens for the vital carriers, kept the kamikaze pilots at bay and destroyed them before they could reach their targets. Over the days that ensued, Japanese kamikaze attacks managed to crash into three carriers—Intrepid, Bunker Hill and Enterprise—on successive days.[5]

 

By 4 June, a typhoon was swirling through the Fleet. Wisconsin rode out the storm unscathed, but three cruisers, two carriers, and a destroyer suffered serious damage. Offensive operations were resumed on 8 June with a final aerial assault on Kyūshū. Japanese aerial response was virtually nonexistent; 29 planes were located and destroyed. On that day, one of Wisconsin's floatplanes landed and rescued a downed pilot from the carrier Shangri-La.[5]

Bombardment of Japan

See also: Allied naval bombardments of Japan during World War II

 

Wisconsin ultimately put into Leyte Gulf and dropped anchor there on 13 June for repairs and replenishment. Three weeks later, on 1 July, the battleship and her escorts sailed once more for Japanese home waters for carrier air strikes on the enemy's heartland. Nine days later, carrier planes from TF 38 destroyed 72 enemy aircraft on the ground and smashed industrial sites in the Tokyo area. Wisconsin and the other ships made no attempt whatsoever to conceal the location of their armada, due in large part to a weak Japanese response to their presence.[5]

 

On 16 July, Wisconsin fired her 16 in (410 mm) guns at the steel mills and oil refineries at Muroran, Hokkaido. Two days later, she wrecked industrial facilities in the Hitachi Miro area, on the coast of Honshū-, northeast of Tokyo itself. During that bombardment, British battleships of the British Pacific Fleet contributed their heavy shellfire. By that point in the war, Allied warships such as Wisconsin were able to shell the Japanese homeland almost at will.[5]

 

TF 38's planes subsequently blasted the Japanese naval base at Yokosuka, and put the former fleet flagship Nagato out of action, one of the two remaining Japanese battleships. Throughout July and into August, Admiral Halsey's airmen visited destruction upon the Japanese, the last instance being against Tokyo on 13 August. Two days later, the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.[5]

 

Wisconsin, as part of the occupying force, arrived at Tokyo Bay on 5 September, three days after the formal surrender occurred on board the battleship Missouri. During Wisconsin's brief career in World War II, she had steamed 105,831 mi (170,318 km) since commissioning; had shot down three enemy planes; had claimed assists on four occasions; and had fueled her screening destroyers on some 250 occasions.[5]

Post World War II (1945–1950)

 

Shifting subsequently to Okinawa, the battleship embarked homeward-bound GIs on 22 September 1945, as part of Operation Magic Carpet staged to bring soldiers, sailors, and marines home from the far-flung battlefronts of the Pacific. Departing Okinawa on 23 September, Wisconsin reached Pearl Harbor on 4 October, remaining there for five days before she pushed on for the west coast on the last leg of her state-side bound voyage. She reached San Francisco on 15 October.[5]

 

Heading for the east coast of the United States soon after the start of the new year, 1946, Wisconsin transited the Panama Canal from 11–13 January and reached Hampton Roads, Virginia on 18 January. Following a cruise south to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the battleship entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for overhaul. After repairs and alterations that consumed the summer months, Wisconsin sailed for South American waters.[5]

 

Over the weeks that ensued, the battleship visited Valparaíso, Chile, from 1–6 November; Callao, Peru, from 9–13 November; Balboa, Canal Zone, from 16–20 November; and La Guaira, Venezuela, from 22–26 November, before returning to Norfolk on 2 December 1946.[5]

 

Wisconsin spent nearly all of 1947 as a training ship, taking naval reservists on two-week cruises throughout the year. Those voyages commenced at Bayonne, New Jersey, and saw visits conducted at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Panama Canal Zone. While underway at sea, the ship would perform various drills and exercises before the cruise would end where it had started, at Bayonne. During June and July 1947, Wisconsin took United States Naval Academy midshipmen on cruises to northern European waters.[5]

 

In January 1948, Wisconsin reported to the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Norfolk for inactivation. Placed out of commission, in reserve on 1 July, Wisconsin was assigned to the Norfolk group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.[5]

 

Post Korean War (1952–1981)

Wisconsin off Norfolk during the 1950s.

 

On 9 June, Wisconsin resumed her role as a training ship, taking midshipmen to Greenock, Scotland; Brest, France; and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before returning to Norfolk. She departed Hampton Roads on 25 August and participated in the NATO exercise Operation Mainbrace, which was held out of Greenock, Scotland. After her return to Norfolk, Wisconsin underwent an overhaul in the naval shipyard there. Wisconsin remained in the Atlantic fleet throughout 1952 and into 1953, training midshipmen and conducting exercises. After a month of routine maintenance Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 9 September 1953, bound for the Far East.[5]

 

Sailing via the Panama Canal to Japan, Wisconsin relieved New Jersey as 7th Fleet flagship on 12 October. During the months that followed, Wisconsin visited the Japanese ports of Kobe, Sasebo Navy Yard, Yokosuka, Otaru, and Nagasaki. She spent Christmas at Hong Kong and was ultimately relieved of flagship duties on 1 April 1954 and returned to the United States soon thereafter, reaching Norfolk, via Long Beach and the Panama Canal, on 4 May.[5]

 

Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 11 June, Wisconsin underwent a brief overhaul and commenced a midshipman training cruise on 12 July. After revisiting Greenock, Brest, and Guantánamo Bay, the ship returned to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for repairs. Shortly thereafter, Wisconsin participated in Atlantic Fleet exercises as flagship for Commander, Second Fleet. Departing Norfolk in January 1955, Wisconsin took part in Operation Springboard, during which time she visited Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Then, upon returning to Norfolk, the battleship conducted another midshipman's cruise that summer, visiting Edinburgh; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Guantánamo Bay before returning to the United States.[5]

 

Upon completion of a major overhaul at the New York Naval Shipyard, Wisconsin headed south for refresher training in the Caribbean Sea, later taking part in another Springboard exercise. During that cruise, she again visited Port-au-Prince and added Tampico, Mexico, and Cartagena, Colombia, to her list of ports of call. She returned to Norfolk on the last day of March 1955 for local operations.[5] On 19 October, while operating in the East River in New York Harbor, Wisconsin was accidentally grounded. However, the ship was freed in about an hour without any serious damage.[13]

Damage to Wisconsin's bow from collision with Eaton on 6 May 1956

 

Throughout April 1956 and into May, Wisconsin operated locally off the Virginia Capes. On 6 May, the battleship collided with the destroyer Eaton in a heavy fog; Wisconsin put into Norfolk with extensive damage to her bow, and one week later entered dry dock at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.[13] A novel expedient sped her repairs and enabled the ship to carry out her scheduled midshipman training cruise that summer. A 120 ton, 68 foot (21 m) section of the bow of the uncompleted Iowa-class battleship Kentucky was transported by barge, in one section, from Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation of Newport News, Virginia, across Hampton Roads to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.[5] Working around the clock, Wisconsin's ship’s force and shipyard personnel completed the operation which grafted the new bow on the old battleship in 16 days. On 28 June 1956, the ship was ready for sea.[6][13]

The bow of Kentucky, transported in one section, by barge, to repair Wisconsin.

 

Wisconsin resumed her midshipman training on 9 July 1956. That autumn, Wisconsin participated in Atlantic Fleet exercises off the coast of the Carolinas, returning to port on 8 November 1956. Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard a week later, the battleship underwent major repairs that were not finished until 2 January 1957.[5]

 

After local operations off the Virginia capes on 3–4 January 1957 and from 9–11 January, Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 16 January, reporting to Commander, Fleet Training Group, at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Wisconsin served as Admiral Henry Crommelin's flagship during the ensuing shore bombardment practices and other exercises held off the isle of Culebra, Puerto Rico, from 2–4 February. Sailing for Norfolk upon completion of the training period, the battleship arrived on 7 February and resumed local operations off Norfolk. On 27 March, Wisconsin sailed for the Mediterranean Sea, reaching Gibraltar on 6 April, she pushed on that day to rendezvous with TF 60 in the Aegean Sea before reporting to Turkey for the NATO Exercise Red Pivot.[5]

 

Departing Xeros Bay on 14 April, she arrived at Naples four days later, Wisconsin conducted exercises in the eastern Mediterranean. In the course of those operational training evolutions, she rescued a pilot and crewman who survived the crash of a plane from the aircraft carrier Forrestal.[6] Wisconsin reached Valencia, Spain, on 10 May and, three days later, entertained prominent civilian and military officials of the city.[5]

 

Departing Valencia on 17 April, Wisconsin reached Norfolk on 27 May. En route, she was called upon to sink a Boeing KC-97F-55-BO Stratofreighter, 51-0258, which had ditched in the Atlantic on 9 May, 550 km (343.8 mls) SE of the Azores Islands following a double engine failure, and subsequently floated for ten days.[14]

Bow view of the battleships Iowa, right, and Wisconsin, left, in storage at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1982.

 

On 27 May, Rear Admiral L.S. Parks relieved Rear Admiral Crommelin as Commander, BatDiv 2. Departing Norfolk on 19 June, the battleship, over the ensuing weeks, conducted a midshipman training cruise through the Panama Canal to South American waters, and reached Valparaiso on 3 July. Eight days later, the battleship headed back to the Panama Canal and the Atlantic.[5]

 

After exercises at Guantánamo Bay and off Culebra, Wisconsin reached Norfolk on 5 August and conducted local operations that lasted into September. She then participated in NATO exercises which took her across the North Atlantic to the British Isles.[5]

 

Wisconsin's days as an active fleet unit were numbered, and she prepared to make her last cruise. On 4 November, she departed Norfolk with a large group of prominent guests on board. Reaching New York City on 6 November, the battleship disembarked her guests and, on 8 November, headed for Bayonne, New Jersey, to commence a pre-inactivation overhaul. She was placed out of commission at Bayonne on 8 March 1958, and joined the United States Navy reserve fleet (better known as the "Mothball Fleet") there, leaving the United States Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1895.[5] Subsequently taken to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Wisconsin remained there with her sister ship Iowa into the 1980s.[5] While berthed in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, an electrical fire damaged the ship and left her as the Iowa-class battleship in the worst material condition prior to her 1980s reactivation.[15]

Reactivation (1986–1990)

Wisconsin prepares to fire her 16-inch (406 mm) guns sometime after her 1987–88 modernization.

 

As part of President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John F. Lehman's effort to create a "600-ship Navy," Wisconsin was reactivated 1 August 1986, a Pre-Commissioning Unit (PCU) crew established, and the ship moved under tow to the Avondale Shipyard in New Orleans, Louisiana, to commence pre-recommissioning workups. The battleship was then towed from the Avondale Shipyard and arrived at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi on 2 January 1987 to receive weapons system upgrades for her modernization.[5][6] During the modernization, Wisconsin had all of her remaining 20 mm Oerlikon and 40 mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns removed, due to their ineffectiveness against modern jet fighters and enemy anti-ship missiles; additionally, the two 5 in (130 mm) gun mounts located at mid-ship and in the aft on the port and starboard side of the battleship were removed.[16]

Wisconsin alongside Saratoga during her 1990-91 Mediterranean cruise

 

Over the next several months, the ship was upgraded with the most advanced weaponry available. Among the new weapon systems installed were four MK 141 quad cell launchers for 16 AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, eight Armored Box Launcher (ABL) mounts for 32 BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles, and a quartet of the United States Navy's Phalanx Close in Weapon System (CIWS) 20mm Gatling guns for defense against enemy anti-ship missiles and enemy aircraft.[16][17][18] Wisconsin also received eight RQ-2 Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which are remotely controlled drones that replaced the helicopters previously used to spot for her nine 16 in (410 mm) guns.[19] Also included in her modernization were upgrades to radar and fire control systems for her guns and missiles, and improved electronic warfare capabilities.[16] Armed as such, Wisconsin was formally recommissioned on 22 October 1988 in Pascagoula, Mississippi under the command of Captain Jerry M. Blesch, USN. Assigned to the United States Atlantic Fleet, she was subsequently homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, where she became the centerpiece of her own surface action group (SAG), also referred to as a battleship battle group (BBBG).

 

During the renovation, pieces of the teak deck were removed and made into commemorative pieces, but they were not marked with an edition number indicating how many were actually created. A brass plaque with the ships name appears on the left and an inscription reading:

 

Mobile Council of Navy League Celebrates Recommissioning USS Wisconsin BB-64

This teak was removed from original deck during 1987-1988 reactivation.

Teak deck piece from the USS Wisconsin reactivation 1987-1988

 

Wisconsin spent the first part of 1989 conducting training exercises in the Atlantic Ocean and off the coast of Puerto Rico before returning to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for a post recommissioning shakedown that lasted the rest of the year. In mid-1990 the battleship participated in a fleet exercise.[6]

Gulf War (January/February 1991)

Wisconsin launches a BGM-109 Tomahawk missile against a military target in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

 

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the middle of the month, President George H. W. Bush, in keeping with the Carter Doctrine, sent the first of several hundred thousand troops, along with a strong force of naval support to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf area to support a multi-national force in a standoff with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On 7 August, Wisconsin and her battle group were ordered to deploy in defense of Kuwait for Operation Desert Shield, and they arrived in the Persian Gulf on 23 August.[6] On 15 January 1991, Operation Desert Storm commenced operations, and Wisconsin found herself serving alongside her younger sister Missouri, just as she had done in Korea forty years previously. Both Wisconsin and Missouri launched Tomahawk Missile attacks against Iraq; they were among the first ships to fire cruise missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. Wisconsin served as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) strike commander for the Persian Gulf, directing the sequence of launches that marked the opening of Operation Desert Storm and firing a total of 24 of her own TLAMs during the first two days of the campaign.[20] Wisconsin also assumed the responsibility of the local anti-surface warfare coordinator for the Northern Persian Gulf Surface Action Group.[6]

Wisconsin fires her big guns on Iraqi positions in then Iraqi-occupied Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

 

Wisconsin, escorted by Nicholas, relieved Missouri on 6 February, then answered her first combat call for gunfire support since March 1952. The most recently recommissioned battleship sent 11 shells across 19 mi (31 km) of space to destroy an Iraqi artillery battery in southern Kuwait during a mission called in by USMC OV-10 Bronco aircraft. Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as a spotter in combat for the first time, Wisconsin pounded an Iraqi communications compound on 7 February. Her main guns lobbed 24 shells on Iraqi artillery sites, missile facilities, and electronic warfare sites along the coast. That evening she targeted naval sites with her 16 in (410 mm) guns, firing 50 rounds which severely damaged or sunk 15 Iraqi boats, and destroyed several piers at the Khawr al-Mufattah marina.[6] In response to calls for fire support from US and coalition forces, Wisconsin's turrets boomed again on 9 February, blasting bunkers and artillery sites, and shelling Iraqi troop positions near Khafji after the Iraqis were ousted from the city by Saudi and Qatari armor.[6] On 21 February, one of Wisconsin's UAVs observed several trucks resupplying an Iraqi command post; in response, Wisconsin trained her 16 in (410 mm) guns on the complex, leveling or heavily damaging 10 of the buildings.[6] Wisconsin and Missouri alternated positions on the gun line, using their 16 in (410 mm) guns to destroy enemy targets and soften defenses along the Kuwait coastline for a possible amphibious assault.[6][20]

A technician moves a Pioneer RPV across the fantail of Wisconsin.

 

On the night of 23 February, Missouri and Wisconsin turned their big guns on Kuwait's Faylaka Island to support the US-led coalition ground offensive to free Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation forces. The two ships were to conduct a diversionary assault aimed at convincing the Iraqi forces arrayed along the shores of Faylaka Island that Coalition forces were preparing to launch an amphibious invasion.[20] As part of this attack, Missouri and Wisconsin were directed to shell known Iraqi defensive positions on the island. Shortly after Missouri completed her shelling of Faylaka Island, Wisconsin, while still over the horizon (and thus out of visual range of the Iraqi forces) launched her RQ-2 Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to spot for her 16 in (410 mm) guns. As Wisconsin's drone approached Faylaka Island, the pilot of the drone was instructed to fly the vehicle low over Iraqi positions so that the soldiers would know that they were once again being targeted by a battleship.[19] Iraqi troops on the ground heard the Pioneer’s distinctive buzzing sound, and having witnessed the effects of Missouri's artillery strike on their trench line, the Iraqi troops decided to signal their willingness to surrender by waving makeshift white flags, an action dutifully noted aboard Wisconsin. Amused at this sudden development, the men assigned to the drone’s aircrew called Wisconsin's commanding officer, Captain David S. Bill III, and asked, "Sir, they want to surrender, what should I do with them?"[19] This surrender to Wisconsin's Pioneer has since become one of the most remembered moments of the Gulf War; the incident was also the first-ever surrender of enemy troops to an unmanned aircraft controlled by a ship.[21][22] Wisconsin drone also carried out a number of reconnaissance missions on occupied Kuwait before the coalition's ground offensive.[6]

 

The next day, Wisconsin answered two separate call fire support missions for coalition forces by suppressing Iraqi troops barricaded in a pair of bunkers. After witnessing the effects of Wisconsin's strike against the Iraqi positions an elated Saudi marine commander commented over the radio, "I wish we had a battleship in our navy."[6]

 

Both Wisconsin and Missouri passed the million-pound mark of ordnance delivered on Iraqi targets by the time president George H. W. Bush ended hostilities on 28 February. With one last salvo from her big guns, Wisconsin fired the last naval gunfire support mission of the war,[20] and thus was the final battleship in world history to see action. Wisconsin remained in the Persian Gulf after the cease-fire took effect, and returned home on 28 March 1991. During the eight months Wisconsin spent in the Persian Gulf, she had flown 348 UAV hours, recorded 661 safe helicopter landings, steamed 46,000 nmi (53,000 mi; 85,000 km), fired 319 16 in (410 mm) rounds,[23] 881 5-inch (130 mm) rounds, 5,200 20 mm Phalanx CIWS rounds.,[6] and launched 24 Tomahawk cruise missiles.[23] Since all four remaining battleships were decommissioned and stricken following the Gulf War, this was the last time that United States battleships actively participated in a war.[17]

Museum ship (1992–present)

Crewmembers man the rails aboard Wisconsin during her decommissioning ceremony.

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the absence of a perceived threat to the United States came drastic cuts in the defense budget. The high cost of maintaining and operating battleships as part of the United States Navy's active fleet became uneconomical; as a result, Wisconsin was decommissioned on 30 September 1991, and was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) on 12 January 1995. On 15 October 1996, she was moved to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and on 12 February 1998, she was restored to the Naval Vessel Register. On 7 December 2000, the battleship was towed from Portsmouth, Virginia and berthed adjacent to Nauticus, The National Maritime Center in Norfolk. On 16 April 2001 the battleship's weather decks were opened to the public by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, a U.S. Navy museum charged with Wisconsin's interpretation and public visitation. The ship was still owned by the Navy and was considered part of the mothball fleet.[6][17][24]

USS Wisconsin docked in Norfolk, Virgina

 

Wisconsin was named as one of two US Navy battleships that were to be maintained in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996 (the other was Iowa).[25] Both battleships were maintained in the United States Navy reserve fleets for use as shore bombardment vessels since their 16 in (410 mm) guns are capable of firing 2,700 lb (1,200 kg) projectiles approximately 24 nmi (28 mi; 44 km) inland; however, Wisconsin is now over 60 years old and would require extensive modernization to return to the fleet since most of her technology dates back to World War II, and the missile and electronic warfare equipment added to the battleship during her 1988-89 modernization are now considered obsolete.[16] Furthermore, during the 1991 Gulf War, she was said to be hindered by Iraqi naval mines, and reports on the Internet suggest that the majority of the shore bombardments were successfully carried out by US Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates and their 3 in (76 mm) guns.[20] In addition, the cost of modernizing Iowa and Wisconsin is estimated to be somewhere around $500 million for reactivation and $1.5 billion for a full modernization program.[26]

USS Wisconsin at her berth in Norfolk

 

On 17 March 2006, the Secretary of the Navy exercised his authority to strike Iowa and Wisconsin from the NVR, which cleared the way for both ships to be donated for use as museums; however, the United States Congress remains "deeply concerned" over the loss of naval surface gunfire support that the battleships provided, and has noted that "...navy efforts to improve upon, much less replace, this capability have been highly problematic."[27] Partially as a consequence, Congress passed Pub.L. 109–163, the National Defense Authorization Act 2006, requiring that the battleships be kept and maintained in a state of readiness should they ever be needed again.[28] Congress had ordered that the following measures be implemented to ensure that, if need be, Wisconsin could be returned to active duty:

 

Wisconsin must not be altered in any way that would impair her military utility;

The battleship must be preserved in her present condition through the continued use of cathodic protection, dehumidification systems, and any other preservation methods as needed;

Spare parts and unique equipment such as the 16 in (410 mm) gun barrels and projectiles be preserved in adequate numbers to support Wisconsin, if reactivated;

The Navy must prepare plans for the rapid reactivation of Wisconsin should she be returned to the Navy in the event of a national emergency.[28]

 

These four conditions closely mirror the original three conditions that the Nation Defense Authorization Act of 1996 laid out for the maintenance of Wisconsin while she was in the Mothball Fleet.[16][25] It was unlikely that these conditions would impede a plan to turn Wisconsin into a permanent museum ship at her berth in Norfolk.

 

On 14 December 2009 the US Navy officially transferred Wisconsin to the city of Norfolk, ending the requirement for the ship to be preserved for possible recall to active duty. The US Navy had paid the city of Norfolk $2.8 million between 2000 and 2009 to maintain the ship.[29] A formal ceremony transferring the ship to the city of Norfolk took place on 16 April 2010.[30] Wisconsin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 28 March 2012.

 

On 11 August 2012, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his running mate, Paul Ryan, from the pier alongside the dock where the Wisconsin is moored.[31]

Awards

 

Wisconsin earned five battle stars for her World War II service, and one for the Korean War. The ship also received the Combat Action Ribbon and Navy Unit Commendation for actions in the Korean War and Operation Desert Storm in 1991. She also received over a dozen more awards for World War II, the Korean War and Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm.[32]

As the world crumbles and the life you once knew becomes nonexistent will you be there to greet your life with one final slumber ? May peace peace find the soul and may you find better on the other side. Press L for better viewing

Bok tower kissimmee FL.

 

My first visit to MRL in 2015 I remembered seeing a flame cut whistle post on the mainline somewhere east of Garrison. We (Welch and I) had places to be seeing as we were racing towards Helena to get the local with an SD45 leader and I didn't remember seeing another one. I didn't prioritize it but I didn't forget it. So, since my experience on MRL's branch lines was nonexistent until this spring I had assumed that was a one-off. Imagine my surprise as I arrived at Sappington and saw another one freshly painted!

 

The next day was Harrison Day for the Logan local. I figured it would be a pretty easy job to pick shots on a 10mph line but then I got out towards Harrison and there were 4 things I wanted to do within a mile or so of one another! Some aggression got me this neat dark-sider of a flame cut whistle post with mountains and the train climbing one heck of a grade and I'm pretty happy.

When the sky is blue, and nothing particular is happening during the sunrise, I take my telephoto lens and wait in case something interesting would develop after all. That morning the wind was almost nonexistent, and trees were not moving, making it easy to capture their shapes, catching the first rays of light.

.

Lost (but not forgotten) London

 

My website | Twitter

 

Copyrighted © Wendy Dobing All Rights Reserved

Do not download without my permission.

The front left corner of this store, as with many SuperTargets, is home to the entertainment sections of music, movies, and books. Target has since downsized these sections, however, which has led to the introduction of that carpeted Memphis “Fan Central” sports team clothing department shown in the previous pic, placed in some of the floor space formerly used by entertainment.

 

This shot, meanwhile, shows what remains of the slightly-consolidated entertainment department, complete with two boat-style overhead signs. I bring up that number specifically because, if you flip back to that previous pic once more, you'll notice that one of the signs is missing. This is due to a chainwide effort to remove some department signs. I took this photo on my September 2017 visit, and by December (when the previous pic was taken), “Music/Movies” was gone. (How that one was chosen over the sign denoting merchandise that's no longer below it, I have no clue.) Other signs in this store were removed as well.

 

(c) 2018 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

Are you looking to catch good waves? Peru surf has many options for you. The entire coast is full of many amazing places for surfers ranging from beginners to professionals.

 

Whether you're going to surf in Lima or in Chicama, you will not be disappointed. South of Lima you'll find a string of sandy beaches, most of them backed by massive sand dunes. The water is cold and rough, the waves are big, and lifeguards are nonexistent.

 

➤ Peru Surf

From day 3 exploring and photographing the historic city of Segovia. Check out the video at youtu.be/nJ1cN3mz9dE

 

The iconic Aqueduct of Segovia. A Roman aqueduct in Spain, built around the first century AD.In attempt to get some images with fewer people I headed out early and captured this image shortly after (a nonexistent due to clouds) sunrise

I totally suck and bailed on the daily photo COVID diary and I don't even know why. Life just felt busy even though it really wasn't.

 

But! A lot has happened since then so I'll just stick to the highlights.

 

I've had my lumpectomy (last Wednesday) and received the pathology report yesterday.

 

So. It seems I'm the luckiest person in the whole world and I'm really still sort of "WOW!" and speechless over the whole thing.

 

My lump that they removed? Totally cancer free. Why? Because when they did my biopsy to determine if I had cancer or not the cancer was so tiny that they unknowingly pulled all of it out to biopsy. So by the time they determined it was cancer and told me I had cancer, I actually literally had no cancer inside of me.

 

Did I have unnecessary surgery? Oh, no. There was still a lump that the cancer lived inside of and it had atypical cells which were likely going to turn into cancer, too. They just got it out before it did. With clean margins.

 

So. When I said to all of my people that I didn't really feel like I could use the whole "I'm fighting cancer" and/or "I"m a cancer survivor" language or even ever felt like a cancer patient? I'm sticking with that. Because I was SO FUCKING LUCKY when so many others aren't and I'm not here to take attention from others.

 

What I am here for, though, is to 100% continue pushing everyone to know their bodies, have everything checked out immediately, and take care of yourselves. That shit matters, y'all.

 

Seriously. This is so crazy to me that it sounds made up. I made my doctor repeat it because it sounded so nuts.

 

I hope this means the radiation treatment plan will be way less (or nonexistent!) but I'll find out next Wednesday.

 

I'm recovering really well from the surgery. The armpit has been the most uncomfortable and even that is getting better daily.

 

And that's the update and the catch-up.

 

tl;dr: I had Schrodinger's Cancer.

View On Black

 

The Serenity of Nature by Garrett Bradley

  

The serenity of nature fills my soul with peace

 

As I lay back on the crisp, yet soft grass

I let my mind wander to a tranquil state

Where pain and suffering is nonexistent

And only the serenity of nature remains

 

While in my state of placidity

I watch in awe as nature works its wonders

I see the trees dancing to the wind's soft, sweet song

A host of bird's announcing the end of a wondrous day

An array of brightly colored flowers

Flaunt their beauty to the world

The pillow-like clouds, like sheep, graze in a large blue meadow

And hide the seemingly shy sun

 

And as i experience this beautiful setting

A gentle breeze whispers to me

'Time to go'

 

The serenity of nature fills my soul with peace

 

check out my site at Perfectly Imperfect Photography

Or my facebook at Perfectly Imperfect Photography on Facebook

I'm gobsmacked by several things here. First, the light was nonexistent. Yet the Sony A7RII performed extremely well at incredibly high ISO. Second, using knowledge developed around a digital Zone System, I knew precisely where I wanted the tonal values and was able to place them accordingly. Third, I am happy to confirm the dynamic range of the sensor extends usefully to below Zone 0 (Zone -2!), even at such high ISO settings. Fourth, 1950s German optics can do the trick. These images were made using a triplet wide angle. Who would design such a thing and make it work? Micro-contrast is something to be seen, otherwise you wouldn't believe it.

Series below.

 

These colorful dragonflies were all around a small pond. It was interesting to watch as the males fought for territory and the females hid away in shrubs near the pond, as if trying to stay away from the males. Please note that the female in-flight shot was taken at 1/250s, accounting for the almost nonexistent wings in the picture.

Giff captured this male Whitetail so I could get a close look. This was the day that Damian, Giff and I ventured to the wetlands hoping for river cruisers - and saw good numbers of river cruisers, emeralds and a russet-tipped clubtail.

 

btw our skies cleared here yesterday so my husband and I headed to the wetlands - had some nice butterflies but were surprised not to see any Monarchs. Odes were almost nonexistent - not even a whitetail flying. No sign of the 12-spotted's nor the old Great blue skimmers. Will post butterflies tomorrow.

 

Happy Dragonfly Thursday!

Presenting the Mistral – A Gas Freighter of the Belt

 

In the weightless void of space, industrial freighters like the Mistral are built for efficiency, not aesthetics. With its reinforced truss structure, independent thruster arrays, and massive cargo tanks, it is a workhorse of the Belt, ferrying precious volatile gases across the solar system.

 

At the forefront of the vessel, what might appear to be a command module is actually a massive impact shield, designed to protect the ship from micro-meteoroids and debris traveling at deadly speeds. In the unforgiving reality of spaceflight, even a stray pebble can spell disaster, and the Mistral ensures its cargo reaches its destination intact.

 

Unlike bulk freighters that rely solely on inertia, the Mistral boasts a full set of maneuvering thrusters, three primary engines, and precise vector control, allowing it to make delicate adjustments during docking, refueling, or evasive maneuvers in high-risk zones. Positioned atop the central structure, a large access hatch provides direct entry to the ship’s systems and cargo bays, facilitating rapid maintenance and cargo transfer.

 

Recreating such an open and lightweight space structure in LEGO is a challenge in itself. The Mistral’s support framework has been carefully engineered to withstand the immense weight of its tanks, preventing structural collapse under gravity—an issue nonexistent in microgravity but crucial for terrestrial display.

 

A testament to function-first design, the Mistral captures the industrial beauty of spaceflight: a vessel built not for comfort, but for the harsh realities of deep-space logistics.

 

The ships is nearly 13 000 parts, 185 stud long (1.48 Meters) and weights nearly 11 Kg

Quite a ways from West Ham

2 students from MIT - amazing work!

 

space.1337arts.com and please read below

 

The $150 Near-Space Camera.

 

Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.

 

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

 

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

 

Launch

 

Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to stop prevailing winds from taking the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wisconsin’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.

 

Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.

 

The Photographs

 

The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.

 

The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.

 

What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.

 

The project website has few details on how the balloon was put together — but the students say they will be posting the step-by-step instructions soon. UPDATE: The instructions will be available for free, not $150, as earlier reported.

 

Project Icarus page [1337 Arts]

 

Photo credit: 1337 Arts/Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh

 

I am alive!

 

This is the MOC I took down to the Christchurch Brick Show in July. Yeah, July. The internet side of my lego life has been virtually (haha, pun not intended :P) nonexistent for ages now.

 

Some of you might remember the Lego graphic novel I was writing and video blogging about earlier this year, until about April. It and I disappeared from the face of the internet without notice. Sorry about that. My beautiful 1-year-old niece passed away very suddenly at the beginning of May, and the project was not a priority.

 

Anyhow, hopefully I'll get back to it at some point. It would be really good to actually get something out of it, because it did have a plot and concepts that I really liked. Right now I'm working on my exhibit for the Auckland Brick Show 2014, a part of a pirate/castleish collaboration. It should be pretty cool :)

 

Thanks for checking this out! :D

This is a failed (but very interesting) stitched panorama of one of the Ladybower Plugholes (or bellmouth spillways for you civic engineers). I had taken several overlapping shots of this plughole with the intent of stitching them into a panoramic view. However, it started raining as I was shooting the multiple images needed for the stitch. To capture this scene, I ended up using five overlapping shots, each in a landscape orientation. However, when using a wide-angle lens you're supposed to tile the photos in portrait orientation to minimize spherical distortion in the final stitched image. I would have needed 8-10 photos to do that but my camera and I were getting wet, so I cut some corners. This is the result.

 

I'm actually not displeased with this. It's quite fun – if nonexistent.

Continuing my theme from my last photo, here is another taken on trains in Tokyo - this time at rush hour in Shinagawa Station. Before you click away elsewhere, please notice the man's arm and sleeve - he was lucky to make it on this train. But at least he can see out.

 

Tokyo is a city where people try to maintain a certain distance from each other - both emotionally and physically. Walk around during the day and you won't see very many smiles. The warmth of each person is reserved for people who are closer acquaintances than a passerby on the street. In a way, I understand. Tokyo is not only one of the most interesting urban environments, it is also one of the harshest - and the picture above shows some of the stresses that each day can bring.

 

Ironically, on a train like this, barely able to breathe, people still manage to maintain an emotional distance, even if the physical one is nonexistent.

 

The theme continues . . .

Canon EOS 7D | Canon 35mm f/1.4 | Natural Light

 

I'm a natural recluse. Ironically. So, there are times when I am tentative about approaching people for this project. But sometimes I see someone who is so obviously photogenic that whatever curmudgeon tendency I may feel at the time is instantly subsumed by my desire to realize the beautiful portrait I see in my mind's eye.

 

Such was the case when I saw this gentleman at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. I mean, clean white on green and a 70's era bebop hat? What's F-ing with that?

 

I approached the brother and he was more than willing to participate. In addition to being a exquisitely attired jazz fan, he is also a plumber. His card says you should call 313 615 6264 if you're "looking for a good plumber."

 

Now, that clean white and green attire, playerific grin, gangsta lean so mean you can see it in a still photo may lead you to believe that "plumber" is some kinda jive-talk euphemism. But nay, the card definitely denotes a plumber of the Merriam-Webster variety

 

Queue the muzak:

 

The producers of The People of Detroit would like to take this opportunity to affirm that the plumbing done by people featured in TPOD does not necessarily agree with the plumbing done by Noah Stephens, The People of Detroit Photodocumentary, and its thusfar nonexistent sponsors.

 

Seek references and execute due diligence when contracting with any service providers mentioned here or anywhere else for that matter

 

That said, I figured I should trust the brother enough to pass along his business information, since he trusted me enough to take his photo.

 

Which brings me to the part of the show where I cast aside my Cloak of Altruism and proceed to talk about myself.

 

For some reason, people really trust me. This project more than anything else has proven that to me. Far more people accept my impromptu request to take their picture than rebuff me. It means a lot to let a strange man take your photo for a strange website you've never heard of. I think its just something about my face.

 

Some other lines of evidence for my status as a trustworthy face:

 

In the last month, two white people in coffee shops have asked me to watch their laptops and personal belongings while they went to the bathroom. One of them was a white woman who asked me to watch her MacBook Pro while she went to tinkle.

 

Now, maybe that shouldn't surprise people in the era of Obama, but its significant to me. See, I've been in enough situations where I was in a mostly white community, relaxing, thinking I had overcome and shit, when out of the blue someone exploded a a lil M80 of racism.

 

A couple of summers back I had just seen Bob James perform at a jazz festival in Birmingham (an extremely affluent suburb of Detroit. They have corner stores that sell Ferraris. Seriously. Google it.), when I stopped to get a sub and had my dignity lynched.

 

A gaggle of passing, middle-aged, drunk white women asked to have a bite of my "sammich."

 

Now, I grew up in the hood. I don't know a lot about white people. But I know they don't call sandwiches, "sammiches."

 

When you are completely relaxed and open, and feeling like you have just as much right to be in a privileged, white neighborhood as anyone else and some shit like that happens, you tend to keep your guard up the next time you are in the same environment. If only subconsciously.

 

So I guess my running assumption is that a cauldron of racism steams beneath the facade of suburban gentility.

 

So, when the aforementioned white woman asked me to watch her MacBook Pro (I'd like to to take this time to publicly recognize her as a credit to her race), I was slightly surprised.

 

Maybe I had over estimated the size of this hidden cauldron of hate.

 

Some of my friends attributed it to my being light skin. I don't know. Puerto Ricans are light skinned, and no one trusts them.

 

Would you ask Fat Joe to watch your laptop? Exactly.

 

I don't think complexion has anything to do with it. I think I just have a trustworthy kinda face.

 

And just to show you I am committed to the scientific method, I even have a control group. Just today in a Detroit Starbucks, a black dude asked me to watch his shit while he went to the bathroom.

 

Does he only trust light skinned black people also? I think the fuck not.

 

It's me, got damn it. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And gosh darn it, people trust me with their shit.

 

And their portraits.

 

[View the ongoing project and meet more of: The People of Detroit ]

All the incredible colors that can be seen in Yellowstone's terraces and hot springs are caused by thermophiles. Thermophiles are microorganisms that live in extremely high temperatures, and have been vital to the history of earth. Without thermophiles, our atmosphere would be virtually nonexistent. As you breathe, be appreciative of these little microorganisms that turned earth from a large, hot, wasteland into the thriving, biodiverse planet we see today.

in the nonexistent November light

Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.

 

The wet-season form has large, very apparent multiple eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults whereas those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. This polyphenism probably has an adaptive role. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because they blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for Satyrine butterflies like the Bushbrown to express.

 

Pu'er, Yunnan, China

 

see comments for image of dry season form....

My favorite beach to photograph is Bandon Beach in Oregon. I still can't believe that I was the only one on this beach at dawn. I could hardly hear the almost nonexistent waves that were 'breaking' about 100 yards off shore. This beach is so flat that a 4 inch high 'wave' will send water 100 feet up the beach!

Canon 5D Mark II

Canon EF 16-35mm II, f/2.8 II, @ 16mm, ISO 400, f/13, 214 Second exposure.

6/365v4

 

...literally. We are all made out of the particles that are here since the big bang and created all the stars and all the planets. We are all just a little bit of star dust and whole lot of ideas about our own importance :)

 

This is a composite of today's self portrait and picture I took last month on a Perhentian island. There is almost nonexistent light pollution there so you can really see all the stars.

Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

 

Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.

 

The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.

 

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

 

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

 

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

 

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.

 

Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

 

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.

 

In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.

 

Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.

 

Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.

 

By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.

 

Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.

 

Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.

 

Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.

 

During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.

 

In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.

 

During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.

 

Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.

 

During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.

 

Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.

 

The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.

 

A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.

 

In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.

 

It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.

 

S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.

 

The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.

 

During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.

 

The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:

 

Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea

Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains

Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.

 

The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.

The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:

 

Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water

Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment

Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale

Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.

Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.

 

Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.

 

Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.

 

The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.

 

There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.

 

The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.

 

A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.

 

A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.

 

Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:

 

Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.

Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.

Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.

Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.

Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.

 

Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:

 

Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.

Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.

Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

 

The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.

 

Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.

 

It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.

 

Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).

 

One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Another misprint from a trip to Vanuatu in 2013. I'm loving the chance effects of whatever happened to the film negatives in the printing process. The lovely guy on the right was our guide in Port Vila. The left side is from another photo, taken from a terrace of a bar on the harbour. We only spent one day in Port Vila as part of our cruise so my knowledge of the city is almost nonexistent. But I'd love to go back and get to know the place better, as well as the rest of the country – which I'm sure is worth visiting and spending some time in.

 

Canon Eos 300

Canon EF 50mm f1.8

Some colour film

THEME: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAcDMHuC2E

 

Introducing my Self-MOC! This is actually the 12th version (12.4 to be exact) and a character reboot, though, and I have revamped the whole thing again since this version, too. I will post a picture showing some of the previous versions (I don't have pictures of pre-7th versions, except for the very first), just so you can get an idea of the evolution of the character.

 

---DESCRIPTION---

Nicknamed "Rahksha" due to her Makuta heritage, Nyctoria is somewhat of a Toa: the most accurate way to put it is, she's a protector...of sorts. She has a strong link with the Netherverse, enabling her to draw on its dark power to perform necromancy, as well as harvest souls and summon them as Netherwalkers (inhabitants of the Netherverse) with her scythe. She can also reanimate corpses to serve her by using seals on their Kanohi.

 

However, the power of the Netherverse always takes it toll, and the user's soul - and therefore body - will decay the more they use it. The only way to maintain oneself is to harvest the souls of others. Hence, Nyctoria hunts down villains to defeat and consume.

 

While Nyctoria does defend others from Makuta and other threats, she is not altrustic in her motives -- she will just as easily consume innocents if there is no other source available, and rarely helps others unless she perceives them or the target as useful in her quest for revenge against her "father", Teridax -- and by extension, her de facto creator, Mutran.

 

As an individual, Nyctoria is largely anti-social, apathetic and an on-off misanthrope - hardly surprising considering her origins. That being said, she is not without a sense of justice and empathy, although her concept of morality is nonexistent at worst and dubious at best.

 

---BIO---

NAME: Nyctoria

 

ALIASES: Rahksha, Daughter of Teridax, Destral's Shadowborne

 

SPECIES: Rahkshi/Toa (mutant; Kraata infused with energy from a Nui Stone)

 

GENDER: Female

 

KANOHI: N/A

 

ELEMENT: Shadow

 

WEAPON: Harvest Scythe - "Slayer's Slave"

 

I got tagged with that "16 things" thing a million years ago. Since I just don't have much time I'm going to cheat and post my "25 things" list that I made for Facebook. Choose your favorite 16.

 

I've been tagged a few times with this one, and I like reading other peoples' 25 random things, so I've decided to post my own. I'm not going to tag anyone else though, because some people resent that kind of thing, you know. Besides, everyone's eventually going to be tagged with this one anyway.

  

1) I have an early memory of standing in the yard of my grandmother's house in Bolinas, trying to learn to whistle. There was a hummingbird flying around the yard and it suddenly swooped down and skimmed through the top of my hair. At that moment, I whistled.

 

2) In high school, I spent an inordinate amount of time designing and drawing plans for a perversely large mansion of the 80s neoromantic-artist/rock-aristocrat variety. These plans were drawn by hand, with pencils, rulers, and ink. There was no handy CAD machine in sight. It was quite a labor of love, or at least adolescent daydream fantasy. There was a two-story entry room with a marble chessboard for a floor and a balcony around the room so you could look down to better judge your next move. There was an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool in a two-story room with skylights and roman columns. There were cypress trees out front because that was very, um, 'classical.' There was a room just for statues. There were hot tubs and fireplaces, a darkroom, and even a urinal (just to have one). My classmates nicknamed the house "The Chainsaw," because it kind of looked like a Husqvarna from the aerial view. Perhaps those fantasies were in part fueled by a bottle of Everclear that was secretly stashed away in the back room for years. These days I much prefer the aesthetics of shack architecture.

 

3) I find myself strangely addicted to television shows that I never would have imagined watching regularly four years ago. These days it's House, The Most Dangerous Catch, and just about every game that Arsenal plays. I also find myself watching a lot Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns. I find Sponge Bob Squarepants to be the most deeply absurdist homage to surrealist tendencies imaginable, and if you don't find it to also be deeply perverse than you're really not looking very hard (often it reminds me of the kind of horrifying erotics of Dali's The Great Masturbator). Plus it has great comic timing.

 

4) My first memories of television are of watching The Making of Star Wars on PBS while desperately futzing with the antenna to get better reception. Then I moved to San Francisco and watched a ton of Ultraman on Channel 2, as well as Godzilla movies, anything on Creature Features, and, strangely, I also remember watching Gone With the Wind. That was all in glorious black and white. I didn't live in a house with a television after that for about 20 years. The TV I own now is the first one I've ever bought — it's 3.5 years old.

 

5) I'm sure that far too many of my libidinal desires were shaped by early exposure to Elfquest and The X-Men. The very first comic I ever bought was an X-Men comic.

 

6) Jacques Cousteau was my childhood hero, and I still count him as one of the major influences in my life. And not just because on that one episode they drank some of the unopened wine they discovered on the wreck of a Roman ship. The Silent World is an incredibly beautiful book, and The Cousteau Almanac was deeply influential on the formation of my environmental consciousness (and way ahead of its time —seriously discussing wind power, alternatives to fossil fuels, and solar power, all back in 1981). I spent a huge part of my childhood wanting to become a marine biologist and reading volume after volume about undersea life. Nudibranchs are perhaps the most beautiful creatures that live on this planet.

 

7) I tend to ramble when I write prose. I haven't decided if that's a good thing or not. At least I don't write like someone who thinks they're going to be the new Hemingway.

 

8) For someone who really has no background in electrical engineering I know way too much about 12AX7s, ECC82s, EL-34s, 6L7s, KT88s, and, of course, the 300B.

 

9) Things I usually have in my bag when I go out: iPod, loaded up with music, Football Weekly, Democracy Now, and Against the Grain; a copy of The London Review of Books, Harper's, or The Wire (soon this list will include Radical Philosophy); a pair of chopsticks — I don't like to use disposables; a camera (always, always carry a camera!); ibuprofen; tissue papers; a pencil case, full; a notepad, full; a spare pair of batteries for my Voigtlander Bessa R2A, in case it goes dead. Sometimes I carry my electronic dictionary with me as well (Japanese/English).

 

10) I often get all weepy at weddings, but I have absolutely no desire to get married myself. Similarly, I love other peoples' pets, but I haven't wanted to own a pet of my own for decades now. When I did want to own a pet, it was an otter. More recently, I was thinking about a hedgehog, but then I found out that they can't be housebroken. That puts them right out.

 

11) I absolutely love the handmade eyeglasses that come out of Japan.

 

12) As the old joke among Marxists goes, "I've predicted seven of the last two economic crises!"

 

13) I was once asked, "Have you started collecting anything since you've moved to Japan?" Here are the collections that are forming: Kokeshi dolls (look it up! —I like the older, more traditional and alien-looking style); vinyl toys, especially representations of Ultraman's enemies; and goshuin stamps — stamps from temples and shrines that you use to round out pilgrimage books. I've always been something of a collector, and luckily I mostly am not completist about my collections (except when it comes to comic books). Here are some other collections that I've started in my time: stamp collection (including a large selection of Soviet stamps, as well as stamps chronicling the rise of Nazi Germany — and yes, I had that Tonga Banana stamp too); a rock collection; a shell collection; a collection of local fungus samples (my mycology phase, not quite over yet); a coin collection (only a lame one); a collection of old telephone-pole glass insulators; a vintage necktie collection; a collection of broken lighters; a pipe collection (I did use them for awhile, but ended up giving them away); of course I have a record/CD collection; a comic collection is de rigeur; a camera collection (not very big, as far as collections go); a fountain pen collection; and a collection of small and rare 1970s poetry magazines from the Bay Area.

 

14) I want to be on the raft with Jim. Or Huck. Or Huck and Jim. Really, I just want to be on the raft. And I want to run like the spotted camelopard.

 

15) According to my father, the first DeVore (it would have been "de Vore," of course) came over from France during the French and Indian War and promptly surrendered to the English. Even though it's probably an apocryphal story, this is definitely a family history I would take pride in. More likely the DeVore side of my family were originally French fur trappers, plying their trade up and down the Mississippi.

 

16) I once caught an alligator lizard that had two tails. And blue-belly lizards (I believe that "Western Fence Swift" is the official non-scientific designation) really do fall into a sleeplike trance when you turn them on their backs and rub their bellies.

 

17) I think that film photography is one of the most spectral, beautiful, haunting technologies ever invented. When you snap the shutter on a film camera, actual photons of light generated by the physical moment itself make their way onto the film strip and burn an image into it that is both a record of the moment, and contains a physical trace of the moment itself. Digital cameras take this trace and convert it into data, but the film trace is always also a physical part of the moment when the shutter snapped open. The film images of dead friends contain the actual physical trace of photons of light that that were reflected from their living bodies. Every film negative contains the actual physical trace of a moment in time, like an artifact from an archaeological dig.

 

18) At a zoo in Zurich, I once had my hand held by an elephant. This was not arranged in any way, but happened spontaneously on the edge of the elephant holding area. The elephant had walked to the wall that surrounded the holding area and it held it's trunk out in my direction. I held my hand up to the end of its trunk, and it sniffed my hand for a moment and then folded the very tip of its trunk around my hand. This kind of contact was totally exhilarating, but also quite terrifying since I had never imagined the incredible strength that an elephant has in its trunk muscles until then. The elephant was so strong that it could easily have broken my hand, but it seemed to know that just giving a light grip was the thing to do. This lasted for under a minute, and then something startled the elephant a bit and caused it to back off.

 

19) My "25 random things" entry is already way too long.

 

20) The first album I ever owned was Kiss, Destroyer. I left it in the sun and it got a slight warp in it. I used to go over to the house of the girl next door and we would listen to it together on her tiny toy record player. She was totally awesome and she had a silver tooth.

 

21) I have a deep and abiding memory of the moment when I looked at the word "t-h-e-r-e" and it coalesced in my brain as the word "there." It's the first memory I have of being able to read spontaneously without having to sound out the letters, bit by bit. It was like magic, or even possession.

 

22) My parents took me along to a Stan Brakhage film when I was just a baby and I ended up getting written up in a San Francisco Chronicle review of the film. "Soundtrack provided by Trane DeVore," or something of the sort. The reviewer wasn't very impressed by Brakhage's work. My parents also took me along to A Clockwork Orange, but apparently I cried so much they had to leave the theater half way. In hindsight, I suppose that was probably a pretty predictable outcome.

 

23) New things since moving to Japan: I bought my very first television set; I bought my very first mobile phone; I learned to snowboard; I can speak Japanese now (but my reading skills are pretty much nonexistent); I experienced my first typhoon (but it was pretty underwhelming); I made friends with people I had only met on the internet; I've decided that cooked, soy-marinated grasshoppers really are one of the world's great beer snacks; I have a research budget.

 

24) I once had shoulder-length hair. I cut it off when I woke up one night panicking because I thought that there were spiderwebs all over my face.

 

25) Did you know, Dear Reader, that I think that you are the most beautiful, intelligent, creative, wonderful and amazing person in the world?

Oops! It turns out this was a different coach to yesterday’s East Yorkshire! So, three more and then I'm done with rail replacement week! Well, with that, that's both the National Express Levante 2s I previously photographed updated and in the bag. And of all the East Yorkshire Coaches fleet, only three coaches, two of them Levantes, remain. Two of them are regulars on long-distance Wyke services, but one annoyingly is seemingly nonexistent. The long journey begins!

 

Seen here initially taken as a throw-away shot without me clocking the number plate, East Yorkshire Coaches' 85, a 2013 Volvo B9R Caetano Levante new for National Express services and originally registered YY63 OJB, is seen here having got out from it's bay and heading into the coaching side of Hull Interchange for a run on rail replacement services.

The nonexistent triangle

Location: Berlin

 

The second Ford GT, the only one I've ever seen, too, is quite a cool machine. And a vehicle completely nonexistent in Berlin for some reason. The owner of this vehicle chose the right spec to represent his favorite football club, Schalke 04.

Soo Line and CP Rail-schemed units lead a westbound freight east of Columbus, Wisconsin on June 26, 1994. My note taking was nearly nonexistent during my first few years of photography and my memory has faded considerably since. I called this the auto parts train as I believe much of the cargo was destined for the Ford plant in the Twin Cities. Perhaps someone can provide more details.